To Bring You Back
by Charles T. Servant
Summary: One month after Dark Oak's defeat, Tails is making a slow and painful recovery from Cosmo's death, however Knuckles makes an incredible discovery near Angel Island and now it seems that another adventure is coming... a Taismo story.
1. Chapter 1

"To Bring You Back"

Chapter 1

A/N: There is actually a reason for the name in the title, the reason it's in quotes and not italicized, and for this long author's note. So the story is that I was listening to a song called "To Bring You Back" by Paul Alan, and then I heard the chorus when I was writing the beginning of this story as it played on my iTunes library in the background. Suddenly, the idea for a title popped into my head and it just made sense because the second part of the chorus goes:

_I walked a thousand miles in this desert sun  
Only to bring you back_

And I thought, "W_ow. That is_ exactly_ what Tails would do for Cosmo_." So yeah, it's actually a great song and I recommend listening to it. But anyway, this is a continuation of the events of the prologue (I'm too lazy to try to recap the last two chapters in a(nother) prologue chapter to the story), so if you want the full reader experience, I recommend that you read the original. Thanks to any continuing readers and I hope you'll enjoy the continuation of the series; I know I have fun writing it. Sorry for the babble (as many of you know, I tend to do that), and now on to the story! (I do not own any of the characters or references to Sonic X. The Sega Corporation does. I only own my OC Maerick.)

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**Beach near Tails' House, sunset, ****one month after Dark Oak's defeat…**

Tails sat on the sun-warmed sand as he gazed out at the purple, red, and orange hues of the sunset. He was exhausted after his first workout with Sonic today and his legs were still protesting that his first run in over a month had been four miles, so the heat of the sand helped relax him. He closed his eyes as he remembered the countless sunsets he had seen on planets during their travels, but even the most spectacular paled in comparison to the beauty of the few he had seen with Cosmo toward the end of the journey.

No sunset could ever compare, however, to the moonrise he and Cosmo had shared on that crazy planet of fortune-tellers and magic potions...the name of it escaped him at the moment, but he remembered that evening like no other. They had stepped on a trap that had catapulted the two into a shallow pool of water just as the moon rose. It had been magical in itself, and he had never been able to stop thinking of after that. His thoughts were always consumed with her afterwards, and whenever their eyes met from day to day he had felt as though the ship's lights became that much brighter... He suddenly realized that he had spent many good times with her, and that they were fun to remember, the good times that is.

_"I just wish she had been able to see our sunset with me..." he thought. "Why did you have to leave Cosmo? Why couldn't I stop him some other way? Why...why I have to kill you!?"_

As he thought this he shut his eyes and clenched sand in his fists, a new wave of guilt and sorrow welling up inside of him, filling the creases between his eyelids with salty tears of loss.

"WHY DID I HAVE TO KILL YOU?!" he shouted to the crashing waves. As he waited for the answer that would never come, he began to think, _"It doesn't matter anyway...in the end we all die... and time just keeps flowing, just like the tide ebbs and flows..."_

As the dark thoughts began to fill his innocent mind, he mentally collapsed, unable to think such things that Cosmo would have been ashamed of, and he stared out through his tear-blurred vision at the sun that had almost completely disappeared over the horizon. _"The waves keep crashing and falling...the tide ebbing and flowing_..._the sun rising and falling...the moon waxing and waning..." _

Slowly, the emotionally drained fox closed his eyes and laid back on the beach, too tired to cry anymore and too depressed to walk back to his house to sleep.

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**Meanwhile, at Amy's House...  
**

Knuckles, Amy, and Cream stood staring at the giant human on the couch in front of them. Even for a human he was tall, and the fact that the couch was made for Mobians made him look even bigger, though how he was laying was an interesting sight to see. He sat with his head hanging off one end of the couch while his legs hung off the other. He was young for a human, probably at oldest eighteen, and he had a striking feature to him. He wore armor unlike anything the trio had ever seen before on a human, as it consisted of metal shielding on the chest, shoulders, and around his arms and legs. He also wore a helmet with a glass visor on the front, and though it was clear now it had originally been an opaque, soft-green color.

Now he lay breathing as he quietly slept, and questions swarmed the minds of the three. Knuckles had rushed to the house as fast as he could, leaving him short of breath and unable to defend himself from the barrage of hostile questions Amy had immediately begun…asking, to put it mildly, about why he was interrupting her tea party with Cream (it had actually been Cream's idea, but Amy doesn't like to be interrupted). The pink hedgehog had stopped almost immediately when she saw the huge boy in his arms.

"Is that…is that Chris?" she had asked.

"No, he calls himself Maerick Stevens." Knuckles had replied.

So after a few hours of waiting they were now still staring in silence at the surprise visitor. Knuckles had finally told them what had happened after he managed to regain his breath from running all the way to Amy's house from Angel Island, but Amy was still confused.

"This makes no sense. The Master Emerald isn't alive; he couldn't have just been randomly dropped in our world by it. There _has _to be a reason for this." She muttered even now. "Oh, I know! Let's ask Sonic if he used the Chaos Emeralds to do this!"

"Sorry, Amy, but even with all of his ability in their use, I doubt even he would know what happened, let alone who this guy is."

"Maybe Shadow will know! He was made to harness their power; maybe he knows how to do something like this!"

"Now Amy, you know that no one has seen Shadow since…since he…stopped Dark Oak with Sonic."

"But…"

"Just stop, Amy. We will find out when he wakes up, but until then he isn't going anywhere. You just have to be patient."

"How can I be patient when you put some stranger on my couch?!"

"Er…well…what I mean is the best we can do is wait…Hey, how about if I stay and watch him, and you can go find Sonic, Tails, Eggman, and Rouge and bring them here?"

"Eggman and Rouge? You've got to be kidding."

"Well, Eggman has turned over a new leaf…

"For the past five days!"

"…and Rouge has also changed for the better. She restrains herself more tha-

"Oh please! She only wants the Master Emerald, and you know it! Even you weren't as happy as she was when Eggman used that machine he invented to restore it. Speaking of which, shouldn't you be keeping an eye on it?"

"Well, Tails made that new security system for me to use, since he was jealous of Eggman's invention being able to completely heal the Emerald in just two days, and what better time to try it than when I need it?"

"Maybe when you can be nearby in case it _doesn't_ work!"

"Right…well…I…uh…didn't think of that…"

"I swear Sonic is so right to call you a knucklehead. Do you _ever _think things through? I mean, how many times did Eggman trick you into helping him?"

"Hey! Who saved this guy's life? ME! That's who. And I knew to get help for him _and_ I knew to not protest when you made me dress up for interrupting your party!" His eyes widened as he said this last part, knowing he had made a grave mistake.

"Hey! Are you complaining about that?!"

"N-no! Of course not!"

"I didn't think so."

"Uh…shouldn't you go get Sonic?"

"No, I have a better idea. You stay here and guard this guy while I find…" she began as she clasped her hands in front of her, "my beloved Sonic! Oh, today is the day he'll admire me for my hospitality toward a stranger whom I don't even know!"

"Wait, that makes no sense. You almost killed me for bringing him here-

"And then he'll be MINE!"

"And you're not even listening…"

"I'll be back with my Sonic!"

"Oh boy…" Knuckles rolled his eyes as she barged out the front door.

Cream finally looked up at him and said something after Amy had left. "She really likes him, doesn't she, Mr. Knuckles?"

"Yep, maybe she does a little _too_ much. Sometimes I can't help but feel bad for the hedgehog. Typically it's after I've seen Amy, too…"

"Why is that, Mr. Knuckles?"

"Because, I've seen what she does with her free time. She trains so that someday she can finally catch him when he runs away."

"But no one can run as fast as Mr. Sonic, right?"

"If anyone could do it someday, it's Amy."

"Oh, you're probably right…"

"It's funny, though, because I think the day she catches him, he won't be running away from him."

"Why is that, Mr. Knuckles?"

"Erm…well…because, Cream, I have a hunch that he… feels for her too, though he won't stop running long enough to think about it…promise me you won't tell Amy what I just said, no matter what happens?"

"But why, Mr. Knuckles?"

"Because you and I both know Amy would do something drastic if she thought she was close to having Sonic."

"Oh, you're right. Amy can be pretty scary sometimes…okay, I promise."

"And, Kid, please just call me Knuckles. I'm not _that_ much older than you."

"Okay…Knuckles." Cream almost winced as she said it. She was just that used to being respectful to adults.

After a time, Cream could not contain her curiosity any longer. "Mist…I mean Knuckles, why did this man say he wanted to speak to Sonic?"

"He said that he had known Cosmo, and needed to speak to Sonic about the Metarex."

"Cosmo? I wonder why she didn't ever say anything about him."

"I don't know, Cream. I'm hoping to find out when he wakes up."

"Mr. Knuckles-

"Cream."

"Oh…sorry, Knuckles, but it looks like Tails is here…"

"Oh, right, Amy must have asked him to come. I'll let him in…"

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**Looking down on Amy's home…**

Against the shadows of the forest, one could barely make out that a mysterious observer was watching the house as Tails went in and that it was indeed a Mobian, but beyond that he or she was invisible.

"_Drat, they've got him." _The Mobian thought._ "I've got to figure out how to get him away from them fast, or they'll lock him up and think he's crazy…then I can't help Tails! Tonight, I will have to free him so I can get his help..."_

The Mobian let out a disgruntle sigh as it began to plan what it would need to do. Slowly disappearing into the forest, the animal melted into the shadows and foliage.

"_Tomorrow is a big day", _it thought, "_I'll have to put him to work as fast as I can so that Tails suffering will end once and for all. I can't stand to see him endure the pain I have…"_

And with that it was gone.

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Poor Tails, his heart is broken and his hope is gone. Will he ever recover from his heartache? Who is this boy who claims to be Maerick? How did he get here, and where is he from? What will happen when he wakes up, and what does he want to tell Sonic? Who is this mystery person, and what is he/she going to do? Is he really trying to help Tails, or harm him? Well, not as climactic as some other chapters, but it is necessary. Stay tuned for the next chapter, coming next week! Please R&R, I could really use any suggestions you guys have!


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

A/N:Thank you to Lord Kelvin for reviewing chapter 1 and this chapter, as he greatly helped me make corrections to them so I could try to improve it. I would also like to thank TailsLovesCosmo for pointing out a characterization error so that I could fix it. If you guys ever have suggestions, please submit a review or a PM; I'd love to hear what you have to say. Here it is, so enjoy! I do not own the characters and references to Sonic X, Sega does.

Thanks to Run Away Slave 002 for reviewing chapters 1 & 2 so i could correct them.

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**Mobius, at Amy's house…**

Tails sat on a chair staring at the boy in front of him. As he analyzed the armor he saw that it was made with technology that was very advanced, and even the metal it was made from was a hundred times stronger and lighter than steel, making it perfect to be used for such a suit. Truth be told, even as puzzled and disturbed he was by this new arrival, he was relieved to have a break from his own thoughts. He knew that such things were not important at the moment, but they always were on his mind.

"_I have to get back to work now__, Cosmo_._ I'm sorry, but no time for distractions."_

The fox inspected the man for any items that could be used to identify him, but he failed to find any. When he was about to give up for the night – as Knuckles, Amy, Cream, and Sonic had already done – he noticed a small screen, thick and deceptively simple, attached to his belt. He removed it and found a port that he could connect his communicator watch to. As his watch attempted to access the data in the pad, the screen lit up with a touch-screen keyboard and a screen probably asking for a password popped up. Tails knew this was important, even though he couldn't read the alien script, so he called for the others right away. After the next ten minutes of waiting for his sleepy friends to wake up, he called again and began to drum his fingers against the nightstand next to him. What was taking so long? He got his answer when the four appeared out of the hallway, yawning at the same time. When he realized that they were all yawning in harmony, he nearly fell out of his chair laughing, as it reminded him of barbershop quartets from old cartoons on Earth.

"What's so funny?" Amy scowled as she sleepily rubbed her eyes.

"Nothing," he recovered, "I just remembered something funny, that's all…now go ahead and sit down. I found something interesting while I was looking over the belt this guy had on. I saw this data pad that had password protection. Now, what I wanted you to see was the language it was in. You all know that this guy speaks a language like Mobian and English, right?

"Yes." They chorused.

"Well, the writing on this screen is in the language that we received the in message from Black Narcissus."

"You mean Seedrian?" Cream was puzzled. "But how could this man know Seedrian? I thought it was spoken only by Cosmo's people."

"It was, but I also noticed that this screen wasn't originally in the programming; it was added in later. Meaning…"

"…that this guy may have run into Cosmo's people! That might be how he knows Cosmo, and how he knows of me!" Sonic exclaimed.

"Yes, but the question remains; why is he here now, and how did he get here?" Knuckles asked.

"I don't know, but once I find that old data bank with the Seedrian language Cosmo and I made from the information we stole from that underground Metarex factory, I will be able to crack the code and access the information. Maybe we'll find out then."

"Well, I guess we'll have to find out tomorrow." Tails said as he looked at the clock reading that it was almost midnight.

"Well, goodnight, Tails. Goodnight everyone." Amy declared as she got up and slowly walked back to her room.

So they gave their good-nights and turned out the lights, completely oblivious to the shadow that crept in from one of the windows. It walked in and stood for a moment over Maerick, coldly looking down on him.

"_Wait, he is just a child! How can he be the one who I saw in that video? That man was almost an elder! How can he be the one who will help me?"_ The Mobian asked as disgust had begun to reveal itself on its otherwise emotionless face.

"_Well, I suppose he's better than nothing…I have all the Chaos Emeralds now, so, if he's the right guy, with the help of his knowledge of chemicals I might be able to finally repay Tails for the wrong I committed…if not, at least I will have tried to save his heart from the pain mine has endured for so long…"_

The animal reached over and hoisted the boy over his shoulder, carrying him out the window as they disappeared into the night.

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**The next morning…**

Tails had woken up at three, and almost an hour later was still on his watch trying to decipher the clue to the password. He was so close, just a little more time…

Suddenly his door burst open and Knuckles barged into the guest room. Tails nearly jumped through the ceiling, but when he got up and turned around he noticed complete shock on Knuckles' face.

"T-tails, what are you doing up so early already? You look awful! You have huge bags under your eyes, and you're staring right through me. Tails you should be sleeping."

"I know…I just wanted to crack the code…hey, wait. If I should be sleeping, than why did you barge in here?"

"Oh…yes…well…you see…"

"Come on already, Knuckles."

"Alright, Cranky! Sheesh... anyway, Maerick is...gone."

"GONE!?!"

"Yeah…I knew you'd be upset. But the thing is, we checked around and the window was the only thing that had been disturbed, but it was the one locked with one of your password locks from when you were testing them, so Maerick couldn't have opened it himself without breaking it or setting it off…"

"What?! Could it have been Rouge?"

"No. She's on vacation at a spa in the city right now, and she already asserted to me that she would never miss this chance to be pampered."

"I don't know then. Maybe one of Eggman's robots? Metal Sonic?"

"He wouldn't be able to figure out the password without setting off the alarm. Same with Bocoe, Decoe, and Bokkun."

"What about Espio and the Chaotix team?

"Doubt it. Vector may be a detective, but he's the most clueless one I know. He wouldn't even have a reason to be here."

"Cream's here."

"Vanilla would kill him. She wouldn't take a liking to the idea of him following her daughter everywhere. He may be clueless, but he isn't stupid. Besides, he likes Vanilla; he doesn't stalk her. That gator doesn't have an impure bone in his body, even when he is misguided. "

"You're right…"

"Well, at least we have the data pad. When you get some sleep, maybe you'll be able to figure this out. Now get some sleep! I mean it."

"Fine, Knuckles."

"Good, now see you at breakfast."

"Okay, goodnight."

After Knuckles had left, Tails lay in bed thinking about things that didn't make sense with this story. For one, Cosmo had genuinely believed that Tails was the first boy she had ever seen, so how would Maerick know her? Also, who would want to take Maerick, or even know about him for that matter? Something wasn't adding up here, so he was going to solve this problem as soon as he could. He was beginning to fall asleep when he remembered the promise he had made on the _Blue Typhoon_ on the way home.

"_Cosmo, I miss you…I will always remember you, though, and I will never forget what you did for me. I still love you so much…but I also need to remember that I'll see you again someday. It just seems so far away…"_

Longing had begun to well up in his heart as he shut his eyes, yet there was peace from fulfilling his daily promise of remembering her as he slipped ever gradually into the realm of dreams where she would still be alive to him. As he dreamed of the party the two had thrown for their friends, a smile crept over his face as he enjoyed his sleep this night. Knuckles came in to make sure he was sleeping, and when he saw the peace on Tails' face, he too smiled and pulled the blankets over him and left the room. Sonic stood at the door looking down on his best friend and the brother he never had.

"_Sleep tight, little buddy. You're going to need it for our work out tomorrow, not to mention whatever else happens. Today has been crazy enough… Just remember I'm always here for you."_ He smiled and closed the door behind him quietly.

_________________

**Meanwhile, in a dark place somewhere in Mobius…**

He slowly stirred, rubbing the top of his helmet as he opened his eyes. He instinctually knew something wasn't right, and judging from the fact that the red animal that had saved his life wasn't there, he probably wasn't amongst the same company.

"_Man my head hurts…where am I? Why is it so dark?" _He thought as he tried to look at his surroundings, finding he was unable due to the darkness. _"I'm in some sealed room…" _he felt under him, and the sensors of his armor told him he was touching solid rock. _"A cave, maybe?"_ He jumped when he suddenly heard movement nearby and frantically looked around. _"Maybe I should use my lights, but then whatever it is might get scared off…"_

"Are you truly Maerick Stevens, the one who tried to save Cosmo?" A voice demanded.

Maerick jumped, realizing the voice was probably from the person who had brought him here. "Y-yes, I am. Who are you?"

"I ask the questions. I brought you here because you were killed trying to save her, correct?"

"Yes…I think I was. But how am I here, alive? I saw the darkness rush into my vision when suddenly a bright light pulled me away from the dark. The next thing I knew I was dropping from a hundred feet in the air, when that red animal caught me…"

"His name is Knuckles."

"Is he…is he a friend of Sonic?"

"Yes, why?"

"Because, I sent Cosmo to a planet called Mobius to tell him about the Metarex when she was ambushed by them…I have to warn them that she was turned into his spy somehow, and that they are coming…"

"Relax, kid. You're on Mobius, and we already beat the Metarex a month ago. You've been dead for a while, haven't you?."

"…I…guess so…"

"Now, I brought you here from a moment just before you died so that you could help us, but somehow that you made a child...I don't know how this happened, but I do know that I need your help."

"Okay, I'll help you. After all, you saved my life. How did you do that, might I ask?"

"I brought you back using the Chaos Emeralds, the ones you read about, to interact with the Master Emerald to reach out to your consciousness a moment before you truly died and brought you here. In essence, this combined two types of Chaos Control, the method of harnessing the power of the Chaos Emeralds, in a way that you could never comprehend-

"Try me." Maerick replied. _"So he too can use the emeralds…but how did he know I read about them?"_

"Fine. So one was that it brought you halfway across the universe to get here, and another is that it reached _through_ time to do it. Normally it can be used to stop time or to warp short distances, but the two combined with the powers of both all seven Chaos emeralds and the Master Emerald enhanced the powers of each enough to bring you here. Got that, kid?"

"I think…"

"Oh well. Moving on. As I said, this is a month after the Metarex were defeated, so I have some bad news for you as well…"

"What? How bad could it be if the Metarex were stopped?"

"Cosmo died saving the universe. She sacrificed herself to keep it from being destroyed by Dark Oak."

"…"

"Hey, kid, everything okay?"

"Th-that monster k-killed her after all…why did you bring me here? To tell me this? To rub it my face!? I already knew I failed her a long time ago…" The boy's eyes had begun to fill with tears of regret. Suddenly his visor became opaque and lights on the outside of his helmet turned on. "WHO ARE YOU?!"

The lights had blinded the owner of the voice. Maerick bit his tongue to keep himself from gasping in surprise. The person, or animal rather, had fur that was pitch black. It had spines that jutted out from the back of his head, streaked with read, and he wore shoes that were white and red, along with a ring on either wrist just above his white gloves.

"My name is…Shadow."

_________________

How many of you saw that coming? Let's be honest, did I make it obvious? In any case, why did Shadow keep Maerick from dying? How is he going to help Tails? How did he even know about Maerick? Stay tuned for more next week and for some of the answers. Please R&R, I could use any suggestions that you guys have for the story or for my writing (heck, I just like to hear from you guys). Thanks for reading, and see you next week!


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

A/N: I decided to post a little early, but I put a lot of time into this one to try to capture the personalities right, so please tell me how I did since it seems I've almost made a few characters sound ooC already in Ch2 and 3. Thanks to Lord Kelvin for helping me correct some errors in this chapter.

Thanks to Nightgazer13 for reviewing Chapter 2, and to TailsLovesCosmo for allowing me to use some of her info on Cosmo. A lot of references back to the last 2 chapters of the first series, so I highly recommend that you read those before continuing on. I do not own any of the characters, except my OC Maerick, Sega does.

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**An island in the ocean…**

Tails sat on the beach sand under the afternoon sun, staring out over the unending mass of monotonous water. Staring through it, actually, as even in this dream he was lost in thought. He had been sitting here ever since his dream of the party on the _Blue Typhoon_ had ended, patiently awaiting the end of his sleep.

"_Why do dreams have to be so long? I need to get up so I can look for Maerick, and now I can't even spend this time with Cosmo. I hate this!"_

He reached down to scoop up a handful of sand, compressed it in his fist, and threw the sand clod at the water. It broke apart, leaving the depressed fox a little irate at his self-perceived failure.

"I can't even make a ball of sand right…" He said gloomily as he hung his head in defeat.

"Well, of course you can't! Not when you're using dry sand! Don't you remember that from last time?" a quiet voice suddenly teased from behind.

The startled fox only became angrier at himself, getting ready to shout as he turned on his side to look for the person. _"Now I have to dream something to annoy myself. This is just grea…"_ He stopped as he caught a glimpse of green out of the corner of his eye, and his hopes soared when he remembered that the island was just a sandbar.

"C-Cosmo, is that you?" He choked as he saw the Petali girl kneeling in the sand in front. He got to his feet as fast as he could and brushed the sand off himself.

"Of course it's me. Why wouldn't it be? After all, who else was there the last time you tried that at the desert world after we ended the flood?" She said as she stood up, a little puzzled.

"Cosmo, I've missed you so much..." Tails said, unsure how to say this to her, imagined or real.

"Why would you do that, Tails? I just went to the other side of the island. I told you I would be back in a few minutes right? Here, how about we swim out to the rock and back, like we always do."

Tails was about to ask what rock, since the ocean had only water, when he looked up at her and saw the sparkle of hope in her bright blue eyes, a sparkle that he would always remember from their time on the _Blue Typhoon_. _"She seems so real…I guess it wouldn't hurt to play along. After all, when she sees that there isn't a rock, maybe the dream will just fall apart and I'll be able to wake up…" _He looked up again and saw her still smiling in all of her confidence and innocence, just like he remembered, though she now had a slightly confused look on her face.

"Is everything okay, Tails?"

"Yeah…sorry about that. I was just thinking. I'll race you there!" He tried his best to sound enthusiastic, but he knew in his mind that this would end. He still didn't want to salt old wounds.

She stopped running when she realized he was still behind her. "Come on, Tails! You can't get behind before we're even in the water!" She giggled softly as she turned to tease him, hoping he would become his cheerful self again.

He looked and to his surprise there was a rock sticking out of the water about 10 meters away.

"Haha, okay. But you won't win without that head start!" He kidded back as he sprinted down the sandy slope to the water, leaving her on the beach.

His lead ended there, though, because he remembered how slow he was at swimming once he was in the water. Cosmo laughed and ran to the water's edge, gracefully dove in, and proceeded to catch up on him easily with a few, effortless back strokes. She stopped when she caught the fox who, although not a _bad_ swimmer by any standard, was tiring quickly while trying to swim freestyle. He was counting his strokes to time his breath when he saw the bubbles from splashing water to his left. He stopped and looked over at the Cosmo, who had a new glint in her eyes. It was a knowing look, and when he realized what she was smiling about, he laughed.

"Hey, no fair! You know that you swim better than I do. Stop taunting me and just beat me!"

"But seeing my teasing make you laugh is so much more fun!"

"Fine, if that's how it's gonna be…" He jumped out of the water, spun his tails to hover, and then flew over and picked her up by her shoulders.

"Hey, that's cheating! You can't move your opponents! Or fly! Disqualified!" She teased.

"I declare myself judge, and as judge I say it's a tie and am ending the competition!"

They landed on the beach and then collapsed in a heap, the two barely able to breathe after laughing so much.

"Promise me…" He finally managed to gasp.

"Wh…what is it…Tails?" She panted.

"Promise me that…we'll always be able to do this…"

"Of…of course…why do…do you ask?"

"Because…I don't…don't want this to end…"

He looked over and realized she was gone. Then he frantically searched and saw that the water had disappeared too. _"No…why do I have to wake up now? Why is it always after the fun just starts?"_ Then his eyes slowly opened, and the sound of birds chirping filled his ears as he looked at the sunlight pouring in through the bedroom window.

"_Cosmo, I won't stop working till you can keep that promise…"_ He thought as he climbed out of bed and put his shoes on.

____________________

**A cave somewhere in Mobius…**

Shadow had finally recovered from his momentary blindness, and now was continuing with his explanation..

"I am…friends with Sonic, and I want to bring back Cosmo." The hedgehog began, his face never changing expressions for a moment. "I…found a data disk a while ago that had information on Dark Oak's plans, information that we used to stop him. A few days ago I got back to Mobius with the help of a fake Chaos Emerald. After I found this cave, I was getting ready to destroy the disk when I noticed that the readout told me a small part of the disk was encrypted. Got that?" Shadow paused again and looked over at Maerick to see if he was still understanding what he was saying.

"Yes, I think. Why are you telling me this?"

"Not important, you should just be listening because I said so. Anyway, I…borrowed one of the best computers currently available and used it to break the encryption. It turned out to be a recording of the encounter you had with Dark Oak, and then a message to his generals that they were to hunt down an escape pod that had left the ship because of the distraction you made. After that there was a data file on your history, though it wasn't in Dark Oak's style of writing, so I didn't think it was right at first." Shadow paused and looked coldly over at Maerick, "Got that, human?"

"Yeah, Dark Oak probably stole that data from my file in the databanks on Coruscant…" he replied. "Wait…so that pod got away?"

"Yes, and Dark Oak did not like how your last stand was a distraction to let it get away. He wanted to hunt down the pod and to behead your body, too, but the pod had long since been gone and your body had 'mysteriously vanished" before his eyes." Shadow stopped for a moment with a hint of a smirk playing at one corner of his mouth from the enjoyment of a moment of pride as he had made a fool of Dark Oak with his superior abilities. "Anyway I brought you here because you knew Cosmo, would want to help her, and I noticed in your file that you were formerly one of the highest ranking scientists in your government on numerous types of biological research, so you might be able to see what happened to her. You said that you failed her, but now I tell you that you have a chance to redeem yourself. Will you…help me?" Shadow winced as he said those words, obviously not used to saying them.

"Yes, if you do me a favor and save someone else as well."

"Fine, but first I will take you Sonic. Hold onto my shoulder."

"Why?"

"Because," Shadow smirked as he pulled out a white gem, "I said so."

_____________________

**At Amy's house…**

The group was finally ready to go after a long morning of breakfast and planning. Amy was about to open the door when suddenly everyone was blinded by a bright white light. Tails was the first to recover, and when he recovered he searched the room for the source and saw Shadow standing next to Maerick, who they had been looking for up until a second ago. Everyone stopped in their place and stared until Sonic finally broke the ice.

"Well, glad to see you're alive, Shadow!" He said as he gave one of his smiles and a thumbs-up.

Shadow stared at him for a second and then flatly stated, "We don't have time for formalities. Tails, we need to use your lab and see the seed from Cosmo."

"What? WHY?!" The fox almost became hysterical. Shadow appears out of nowhere and suddenly wants to come between him and Cosmo again? _"Not gonna happen!"_

"No time." He replied coldly.

"Whoa, buddy. You'd better make time, 'cause you're not going to go anywhere or use any of our stuff without telling us what's going on." Sonic said as he stepped in front of the door.

"What, you think you could stop me?!"

"I know we could." Knuckles jumped in.

"Yeah, together we'll stop you!" Cream exclaimed, though a little unsure of herself.

"Chao CHAO!" Cheese agreed.

"You barge into _my _house and then threaten _my _friends?! You've got some nerve!" Amy criticized as she pulled out her piko piko hammer.

Shadow was taken aback at their sudden hostility; after all, he was trying to help, wasn't he? Though he didn't see how he caused it, he did see that the fastest way of ending this standoff was to tell them.

"This may be a matter of life or death for Cosmo." He finally said after a few grueling minutes of angry glares.

Everyone froze at this and once again the party was frozen in its tracks.

______________________

**Refugee ship, two days before Cosmo's arrival on Mobius…**

She was running through corridor after corridor, the Metarex closing in at every turn. Her blue hair flailed wildly behind her as she sprinted to escape the murderous clutches of the machines that pursued her. Her dress was wrinkled and ripped from some close encounters she'd already had, and she was covered in scratches, bruises, and soot. Fear crept down her spine as energy-filling adrenaline coursed through her veins, filling her senses with the sounds of the alarms, the sight of the red emergency lights, and the smell of sweat on the three men in white armor running with her. She glanced over at them and noticed that they were barely winded, though her lungs were burning from strain.

"_Soldiers have such an unfair advantage. They have conditioning while I haven't run since the last time Cosmo and I played together…"_

She was cut off in mid-thought as a group of Metarex rushed out of the side corridors ahead, blocking off the way.

"Galaxina, get down!" yelled one of the men. "Snipe, give us some cover fire!"

At this the entire group jumped behind piles of rubble, though the man Snipe was a little disgruntled at being told what to do.

"Alright already! Just let me do my job _my_ way, Biome!"

"Not the time, Snipe. Hey, Slick, stay with Galaxina. We'll-GRENADE, GET DOWN!"

"Wait, Metarex don't have grenades…" Slick began.

Suddenly there was a bright flash and a loud bang, and Galaxina found herself on the ground with a loud ringing in her ears. She tried to sit up, but she was too dizzy from the blast to hold herself upright. After a few seconds of lying still, she was finally able prop herself up on the pile of rubble when she heard a mechanical grunt and was grabbed from behind.

_____________________

**Planet Tes' La, modern time…**

Galaxina awoke screaming, sitting up and instinctually reaching for the blaster rifle by her side. She sat still for a few seconds, fighting back the tears of fear. She began to shiver and realized she had thrown her blanket off while she had tossed and turned during her nightmare. Finally she smoothed back her blue hair, which had been knocked into disarray, and then put her weapon down.

"_It was only a nightmare. No Metarex will find you now. You are safe here." _She tried to tell herself, though she always had her doubts.

To reassure herself of her safety, she got up and quietly left the cave, careful not to disturb her companions. Once she was outside, she stared up at the night sky illuminated by the lightning that never stopped flowing through the atmosphere.

"_No Metarex can get here. Tes' La's sky will electrocute them first…"_ she reassured herself, "_but neither could Cosmo. I hope she's okay…Maerick, you'd better have kept your promise to me that nothing would happen to her! I don't want my trust in animals to be misplaced, but somehow I know you would die before breaking a promise …"_

She finally crept back into the cave and quietly crept over to her blankets and laid down, hoping that the sun would rise soon.

"_I don't want to dream of monsters anymore…"_ She thought as she stared up at the ceiling. She had seen enough in real life.

__________________

So ends another chapter. Tensions are building and the adventure is beginning, so please stay tuned for more next week and please R&R! Thanks for reading!


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

A/N Thanks to TailsLovesCosmo, seektorectify, Lord Kelvin, and Archaon for reviewing Chapter 3. All characters other than Maerick owned by Sega.

I would like to specially thank seektorectify and TailsLovesCosmo for the great help they've given me with writing this chapter and with some concepts for future use.

_________

**Mobius…**

Sonic, Tails, Amy, Knuckles, and Cream stood bewildered at what Shadow had just said.

Knuckles was the first to regain his composure to respond.

"You actually expect us to believe that? You disappear for a month and then suddenly appear with a guy who fell from the sky and a crazy excuse about it being for Cosmo?"

Shadow smirked at this, "This coming from the guy who fell for Eggman's conversion stories? At least twice? That's a laugh."

"Why you…you're the one who fought for him even though everyone told you he was lying about helping you with your past! I mean-

"Enough, Knuckles." Sonic waved off Knuckles' outburst. He knew things needed to get moving, and that fighting was useless now. "Let me get this straight, Shadow, you think that you can help Cosmo? How can I be sure that you aren't just here to finish the job you started?"

No one but Sonic noticed a quick change in Shadows expression at that statement. It was almost a grimace, but it was hard to tell since it was gone as fast as it appeared.

"I was the one who brought back Maerick. He-

"Wait, brought back?" Cream asked, more than a little confused now.

"Yes, but it is a long story. So that you all can understand, Maerick was originally alive before Cosmo came to our world, but Dark Oak killed him. Well, almost. I brought him here with Chaos Control while tapping into the Master Emerald, which is why he 'fell from the sky'." He paused to check if there was anyone who understood; only Knuckles. Tails, and Sonic did, but he began again anyway. "This was because he was once a top scientist in his world for many branches of biology. He knew Cosmo, so he would be willing to help her, and he may be able to. Now, we need to go to your lab, Tails, and to see Cosmo's plant."

"Okay...but promise me you won't hurt it." Tails grudgingly accepted, still unsure if he should give up his last real reminder of Cosmo.

"You have my word." Maerick promised, though Shadow just glared at what he thought was a second attack on his intentions; The Ultimate Life-form did not like to be questioned.

So the group rushed to Tails' workshop without another word.

_________

**EggCorp Headquarters, Station Square, somewhere underneath the building…**

Many people had wondered how his vow to create a new Eggman Land had put him here, a former mad scientist now at the top of the business industry. As he had explained, he wanted to try to make a new kind of empire, one that used business as its weapon and utilized the full capacity of his brain while making his life and the lives of those around him easier. Thus far he was barely two-for three. His business had exploded into a full-fledged corporation in the few days after his return, yet he was still doing tedious planning that left his mind craving more explicit challenges than the projects he did for this business. It was nice, though, that the pubic was actually grateful whenever they took a break from slandering his former…hobby.

He grumbled as he struggled to shift positions with his jacket that hung tightly around his mid-section. He had always hated having to wear a suit that barely fit his…thick-boned torso instead of his red jacket and black pants and boots. Even worse, since the process of theorizing, creating, revising, and finally perfecting the most complex projects took him less than an hour, he felt his massive intelligence was being left untapped, and therefore wasted. After all, there were only so many types of drones you could make, as he had soon discovered. He was already regretting naming the company EggCorporation Drones and Electronics. The second branch gave him a little more to work with, but electronics for the public were so simple that they gave him headaches if he worked on them too long.

"_Well," _he thought, _"at least this project is taking my full attention." _He smiled at his handiwork. Then he frowned and quickly erased something on the paper and scribbled some notes.

Dr. Ivo Robotnik, or Eggman – as he was informally known, sat in his underground lab making fine-tuned adjustments to his blueprints for a space station to be used as the beginnings of the new Mobian space-port, _The Ark II_, a name he had used as tribute to the station his grandfather had lived his life on. In all actuality, it looked very different from it's predecessor since instead of the main structure being a dome it had a stout, cylindrical structure (think the top of a screw w/o the niche in it) with four large extensions – one in each compass direction – and the single pylon pointing toward the planet below would be for stabilization purposes only. His plans were to introduce Mobius to the universe by being the first to commercialize – or develop, for that matter – the space industry on the planet. He was hard at work creating a fleet of trade vessels, frigates to deter pirates, and the makings of the port to establish on the planet to create a booming trade with the galaxy. He smiled at his current finished product, as now it was ready to be built at last.

"Doctor Egg-I mean Robotnik, sir. Princess Sally is here to speak to you on behalf of her father. She is in the lobby right now waiting for you." Decoe blurted out as he burst through the doors of Eggman's private "study".

"What? Can't you tell her I'm busy working right now?" An annoyed Eggman complained, though he noticed Decoe was finally remembering his new business name. A bit more formal and less evil for the people, putting them at ease so he could use regain their trust a little bit easier. Of course, it still would take time for them to get used to, but it would work out in the end.

"She said it was a matter of "paramount importance" and that whatever work you had could wait. Something about a public uproar at your plans for being absent from the festival next week…"

"Oh, alright. I'll be there in a minute."

He then looked over at the stock ratings on his personally-upgraded version of the portable Palm-Comp© that sat on his desk, one of his first inventions for the company along with the construct-egg drones he had made to build this building in just a day, not to mention create this entire city in four so he could impress the public. He had named it after the city on Earth he had so many memories of, for sentimental purposes. His stocks were up so high now that investors everywhere were now spending hundreds for a single stock. Of course, they had no idea that he himself had purchased the first 85% of his stocks to inflate the price so much and make him the main proprietor of the company. Was it illegal to do? Probably. He didn't pay attention to such laws, so he really didn't care if he was breaking them, especially since no one else did either. Was it necessary? Most definitely. Because of this he alone was gaining great amounts of power over the free market of the city, and it provided some release from his mental boredom to run the companies finances as CEO and owner so that no one had say over him. Some habits die hard.

"_I really wish that something interesting would happen again, if just to give me a break from these mind-numbing doldrums…in any case, if this continues to be so monotonous I may try a run at the world of politics next…in any case, things are bound to get interesting soon enough." _Eggman sighed as he though about the under-use of his superior intellect, and then struggled to stand up. He was beginning to ponder a career as a politician as he started toward the elevator for his meeting with pestering royalty.

_________

**Tails Workshop…**

The entire group – other than Tails and Maerick, who were moving around the lab in busy manners like bees – stood by the door watching. Sonic was of course tapping his foot, waiting, Knuckles had his arms crossed, and Shadow wore a scowl as always, but they all were interested in what was happening. Finally Knuckles' doubts were too much to bear.

"Sonic," he whispered, "Do you think this guy can really do _anything_ to help her?"

Sonic gave him a rare glare and shook his head in amazement. It was only then that Knuckles' realized the lab had become eerily quiet. He looked over at Maerick and saw a mixture of anger and doubt in his eyes. Shadow sighed while he muttered under his breath, uncrossed his arms, and pushed the young veteran out the door and closed it behind them. Tails went back to work on putting together the machine Maerick had asked for, a tissue analyzing array. He put the finishing touches on the machine a couple minutes later, and began to wonder the point of this.

Tails silently agreed with Knuckles. _"It's just a seed, after all. Seedrian or not, wouldn't it just have the typical tissues of a seed? Man, this is all confusing." _Machines he got. Chemicals he got. Math he got. Living things took him more time to figure out, though. He had learned that time and time again with each new friend he made.

Meanwhile on the porch, Shadow was listening to Maerick vent his doubts like the teenager he had been turned into.

"Not a single one of them trust me, and how can they when I don't even trust myself? Why did you even bring me here? I agree with them, couldn't you have just gotten this Eggman fellow to do this for you? It sounds like he's the one for the job with his entire 300 IQ, not me!"

Shadow waited as his temper boiled at how much time the soldier was wasting, and when Maerick finished he replied with cool, biting criticism. "Are you done with your pity party? That eight-year-old fox in there lost more than you when she died, yet _you're_ the war vet and _you're_ the one out here crying." Shadow sighed again; amazed that he had to say this once more. "I picked you because Eggman doesn't know anything about handling living things: he turned them into robots, captured them, or killed them. You, however, know how to deal with such things. Now stop whining, get a hold of yourself, and get in there and help the fox!" the matter wasn't open for discussion any longer.

Maerick resigned himself to defeat, knowing he was letting these new, emboldened emotions get the best of him. "Fine…to think, a soldier put to shame by a child…" he muttered as he opened the door. Maerick walked over to where they had moved the seed and, seeing that the TAA was ready, placed it on the tray of the device. He then walked to the side of the apparatus (think of it as something like the machine they analyzed Cosmo with), and activated the machine. The seed was bathed in a pool of light-blue light and the screen Maerick watched showed a picture of the seed and began to beep softly as the test finished. Maerick began to frown as he scrolled through the final report as the machine brought it up on the screen.

"Hm…well, that's interesting." He said, taking off his helmet to get a closer look at the screen while he stroked his non-existent beard.

Tails rushed to the monitor, slightly panicked by the response. "What? What happened?"

"Well, I may not know Seedrian biology, but based on the fact all of the cells resemble cells of animals with the small difference of the presence of a unique cell wall and other dormant, plant cell organelles (in layman's terms, it looks similar to and functions almost exactly like its animal-cell counter-part), it seems that the main body of the interior of the seed is nerve tissue, while the rest of the seed is composed of cells from all the types of tissue necessary to make a complete organism (again, center of seed appears to be a small brain, while the rest is made up of parts of all the different types of organs in a Seedrian)."

Tails stared up at the human completely puzzled by this almost foreign language that the soldier was speaking. "I only know about chemicalsand machines, so could you explain that to me what that means?"

Maerick looked around the room and found similar expressions on all of the others' faces.

"Well," he sighed, "I have good news and bad news. This is without a doubt Cosmo, and she is still alive, but it seems that won't be changing anytime soon."

"And that's bad how?" Knuckles asked, more than a little confused and suspicious.

"Because the seed she is surrounded in, even though with the proper nurturing it would eventually grow into Cosmo, is being kept from growing by a small barrier of strange, yellow energy. It consequently is also what is keeping her alive at the moment"

"The Chaos regeneration…" Shadow began, realizing that the energy was indeed chaos energy.

"So you're saying that the only way to let her…grow into herself again is to cut her off from the thing that is keeping her alive?" Amy asked, distraught at this revelation.

"Precisely, that is the problem we face." Maerick replied.

"Well then, I guess we'll have to use the Chaos emeralds to remove the energy from around her and then maybe we can try using Chaos Regeneration again and see if that revives her this time. That way she'll be alive, free again, and she won't have to grow up a second time." Sonic said, pleased with how his plan solved everything quickly with the least amount of risk. "And since you have the Chaos Emeralds already, Shadow, we can use them to get all of this done today!"

Shadow stared blankly back at him and then at the ground. "There's just one problem. After I used the Chaos Emeralds, they shot off into the sky together…"

"They WHAT?" Knuckles yelled, furious at the problem the "Ultimate Life-form" had created.

"They didn't separate, though, so they'll probably be very close together if not at the same place. It was just…a slight miscalculation." Shadow begrudged, trying to stay the echidna's temper.

"Slight miscalculation?! We get home long enough to sit down and suddenly you send us on another trip across space? I don't think so!" Knuckles started to crack his namesakes and move menacingly toward Shadow.

"Enough!" Tails scolded as he stepped between the two, surprising them both. One thing the trip had done was make the fox a little more assertive, even if only at certain times. "Knuckles, I know you're angry, but please, we've had enough fighting amongst friends. And besides…this is for Cosmo…"

Seeing the look of hope pleading in the fox's eyes was enough to make the fighter calm down long enough to realize what he was doing, so he backed off. Shadow allowed the Chaos Spear he had in his hand behind his back to disappear as well.

Sonic was tapping his foot again as the seconds of silence dragged on. "Hey what are we standing around here for? Like it or not, we need to get ready for another trip, so let's get on it!"

As the group sluggishly left the building - except for Sonic, who took off running - Maerick pulled Shadow off to the side. "Wait, Shadow, I held up my end of the bargain, so if I go with you guys can we make a stop on the way?"

"Yes," The hedgehog replied for the group, knowing that the others really didn't have a way of stopping it anyway.

"Okay, I'll take care of getting us there and then-

"And then I'll handle the rest." He said, not waiting for a reply or even for Maerick to finish what he was really going to say as he left the building.

So Maerick ran to catch up with the group as Shadow sped his way up to them.

_________

I know what you're thinking. You think that the space trip seems clichéd, but the point of it is that what began in space will end in space. A little poetic attempt on my part, though most of you are probably rolling your eyes. Haha, anyway, please R&R, and thanks for reading. Tune in next week for the next chapter, and if you have any suggestions pr criticism, I'm all ears. Just send me a pm, review, or email, and I'll do what I can.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

A/N: Thanks to seektorectify and Nightgazer13 for reviewing Ch4 this week. I do not own the characters of the Sonic X franchise; Sega does.

_______

**Tails' Underground Hanger…**

The group had taken an elevator in the basement of the workshop to Tails' underground hangar for the ship. The structure itself was enormous and completely sealed, so it was lit by a few lights that left eerie shadows around the corners of the building. All of it was made purely of metal, so the resounding clanks from the footsteps of the group echoed throughout the building, giving an empty feeling to the hangar. They stood on a deck that was a lattice of metal cross-weave, allowing them to see that the ground was really a couple dozen feet below them. The deck stretched a few yards short of the edges of the sides of the main hull of the ship from all of the walls of the hangar, about midway up the hull. To their left there was an extendable section of the deck that would connect to a door in the side of the hull for easy access, which Sonic, Knuckles, and Shadow immediately went through once Tails was done briefing them. Now Amy, Tails, Cream, and Maerick waited for the return of the three.

Actually, the first three sat talking while Maerick had walked up to the rail of the deck and now stood in awe of the massive ship before him, a gargantuan white vessel accented with blue paint in key areas along with a little yellow. On top of the front section of the ship's body was a runway with palm trees lining the sides, which he noted was very similar to the runway he had noticed near the workshop. It was easily the same size as, if not slightly larger than, the Dreadnaught which his battalion had used until their fateful exile, and later destruction. Suddenly memories of his lost and fallen comrades flooded his mind, causing him to almost fall off-balance

"_I'm coming for you guys…"_ the officer thought, after he had righted himself _"I won't abandon you, and I _won't_ fail you again..." _

He cringed as the images of voracious jungle and the sounds of bloodcurdling screams filled his senses. Tails walked up behind the teen and patted him on the shoulder, even though it was quite a reach for the small fox. "Is everything okay, Maerick?"

He was instantly snapped out of his thoughts. "Y-yeah, sorry about that; I was just remembering a promise I made a long time ago."

"I know what you mean," Tails looked out at the ship again, "I made one to a friend that I would never forget her, no matter what will happen. I've been trying to do that, but because I lost her, remembering can be painful at times…"

The soldier smiled sadly, remembering what that pain felt like as he knelt down to the fox and put his hand on his shoulder. "I know it can be painful at times to remember those that you lost, but never stop remembering the good times you spent with them. Even the most remote time that you shared; if it was happy, _that_ is how they would want you to think of them."

Tails looked away, "Yeah…you're right." He couldn't do that himself yet, but he knew in the end he would.

The soldier stood up and looked down to the kitsune. "Lastly, if you ever want to talk to someone about this kind of thing, I'm always here. I know I don't know you very well – or you, I – but loss is something I am quite familiar with." Maerick began to have a distant look in his eyes.

"Why is that, Maerick?" Tails said, slightly concerned about his sudden change in the tone of his voice.

"Because, lad. When you get as old…err, young…um, never mind. Anyway, when you see as much war as I have, you see that it does that; it kills those you care for. Wars are started by greed, hatred, mistrust, or a combination of the three, which on their own are enough to corrupt a person to the point of killing others, making wars even greater wastes of life. I know _I _lost a lot of friends to it, though millions more were killed in that war with the Metarex that ended our galaxy."

"I'm so sorry to hear that…if you ever need help, or someone to talk to, I'm here for you too." The fox said as he looked up at the veteran.

"You never cease to surprise me, kid. A fraction of my age and you're already more mature than I am at times. You've got a good head on your shoulders, Tails. Now, how about we see what we can do with this ship?" He smiled as he looked at his newfound friend.

Sonic, Knuckles, and Shadow walked over to the two with grim looks on their faces, their return an ominous signaling of coming bad news.

"Tails," Knuckles began, "We checked the ship, but you were right. The experimental generator…overloaded. The explosion destroyed the engine room and mangled the power grid for the ship."

"Oh no, that could take weeks to fix!" Tails exclaimed; every bit of time was necessary since there was no way to tell when the Chaos energy around Cosmo would fade.

"But there's more. There was a leak in the oxygen tank…" Knuckles continued

"No…the heat released by the explosion would have caused a fire with that…"

"…yeah, so now both bridges are wrecked, as well as the sleeping quarters, the hangar, and anywhere else the lines for the tank led…"

"What are we gonna do? I can't repair the ship that fast…even Eggman's repair bots would take at least a week to fix it, and we don't have that time!" Tails panicked, but slowly he forced himself to think.

Sonic began to grin as he thought of an idea. "Hey, how about instead of wasting time trying to fix it, we go to Eggman and ask to use _his_ old ship. I mean, I hate the idea of flying around in a one of his goofy ships as much as you guys, but like Tails said, we don't have time. Besides, this way we can test him to see if he's real about the 'new' him!"

At first everyone but Maerick, who still had no idea why Eggman was so hated, protested, but they came to see Sonic's logic. So the gang left the hangar and rushed to the newly built Station Square as fast as they could.

_________

**EggCorp Headquarters, Station Square, Executive office…**

Dr. Robotnik slouched in his big armchair as he stared out of his office window from the top floor of his skyscraper. He gently massaged his temples, trying to recuperate from the _very_ long meeting with Princess Sally. He hated having to call her by her title, since he had once been so close to making her kneel before him all those years ago, but the fact that she was as stubborn as ever gave him an even bigger migraine. Maybe someday if and when he made the government democratic, he would run for president; if he won she would serve him...but one step at a time. He looked over at the monitor and watched the live feed of the second day of construction of one of his beautiful space ships in the hangar outside of town. He was disappointed he had used such an un-personalized design for the ship, but it was the prototype for the inter-galactic transports he was making, and he doubted people would buy his personal designs, especially since he had been told by his commissioner of sales numerous times that his designs were too "awkward" for the general public. (If you want to see what I think it would look like, look up Akkan Battle-cruiser on Sins of a Solar Empire Wikia)

"_They just don't understand my genius in architecture. Or in fashion for that matter…" _he sighed as he once again looked down at his most hated possession: his suit. _"Why must I listen to these ingrates? I give them so much junk that they are amazed by and then they turn on me…I hate having to yield to anyone, but incompetents like those in the public? Oh, I don't know how much longer I can take this…" _

Suddenly his door burst open as Sonic and the rest barged into the study. Sonic, never one to waste time with pleasantries, went with a blunt approach.

"Hey, Robotnik! We need to go to another galaxy but the _Typhoon_ is toast. Can we use your old ship?"

"Well, since you asked so nicely, I would if I could, but I had it dismantled to be worked onto one of my other projects."

"Don't you have _something_, Doc? We just found out that Cosmo is still alive, and we need to go into space again to bring her back."

"You lost the Chaos Emeralds again." There wasn't any questioning tone in his voice.

"Yeah, but long story short we need to find them again. Got anything?"

"As a matter of fact, I do. I was working on a new armed transport ship for commercial use to ship goods across the galaxy. I was going to need to test it, since the prototype was just finished a couple of minutes ago. Haha, you just have impeccable timing as always, don't you Sonic?"

"I guess so, Eggman, but will you let us use it?"

"Under one condition. I _am_ running a business, so when you get back I expect a full endorsement of my space products by you and Tails when you get back."

"WHAT?!" Tails was aghast that he would have to endorse his science rival's product, but he wasn't left with much choice. "Fine, but don't expect anything else!"

"Oh, I wouldn't dream of it." Robotnik smirked. "After all, this is the _new _me we're talking about, though old habits die hard, I guess. Anyway, follow me." He said as he led them to an elevator at the back of his office.

The team grudgingly went with him. The elevator stopped at the bottom, and then opened to a platform for an underground shuttle.

"It's my own personal subway to connect the buildings of my company. Completely legal, since the mayor wouldn't have his position if I hadn't built this city for him." Eggman smiled at his own ability to…work with others.

They arrived in an underground terminal similar to Tails', and when they stepped out they saw a huge craft waiting for them.

"Naturally, as I am an 'honest man' now, I will provide you provisions for a year trip. In addition, I have taken the liberty to have added a new targeting system to the weapons so that they will not require gunners when activated, and there is an updated, improved, and _stabile_ version of the warp generator we made, Tails, so you will be able to cover light years in just hours compared to the days of the first. However, do not use it too frequently since it burns most of the energy stored in the ship. It's stabile now, but if you burn out the energy for the failsafe containment units after using it, it could be…catastrophic, to say the least. So please, use it sparingly. If you die, I won't have anyone with whom to have these invigorating battles of wit with. Really though, these people will drive me mad with their incompetence!"

"Aw, are you going to miss us, Eggman?" Sonic smirked.

"Ha! Me? Never. I'll just be bored out of my mind. Anyway, the ship is charging up and the supplies are already on board, since I called ahead. Now, be sure to hold true to your end of the bargains…err, hold up your end? I just can't get used to these trivial business catch-phrases…anyway, good luck with Cosmo, Tails!" Eggman said as the group entered the ship, too shocked by his sudden generosity to respond.

After a few minutes, the ceiling opened and the ship slowly lifted off the ground and then began to fly foreword as it climbed higher into the atmosphere. Eggman smiled as they disappeared into the sky.

"_Don't come back too soon, though. I want to have _some_ fun while you're away…"_

_______

A little bit of a shorter chapter, but an integral one, nonetheless. Hope you guys liked it, and if you have any recommendations, comments, etc. please send me a pm, email, or review the story. Thanks for reading, and see you next week!


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

A/N: Thanks to TailsLovesCosmo and Nightgazer13 for reviewing Ch5. I do not own the characters of or any references to Sonic X, Sega does.

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**Aboard the **_**ECTF Gerald (EggCorp Trade Fleet)**_**…**

Tails sat cheerfully in the captain's chair of the bridge of the ship, happily waiting for the arrival at the edge of the planet's gravitational pull so he could activate the jump drive. He was thrilled when he had discovered that the bridge of the ship was identical to the second bridge of the _Blue _Typhoon, and he felt like…what was that saying on Earth? Oh, like a child on Christmas morning. He was enthralled by the technology Eggman had installed on the ship, and had driven everyone but Sonic out of the bridge with his "technical babble", as Amy had called it, and now even Sonic was barely able to smile and nod. Tails had caught on, though, so now he silently admired the design of the new jump drive. It filled him with pride that it combined the technologies that he had invented, the ones that created rings of Chaos Energy from the Master Emerald that would engulf the ship and warp it light years away, with a heavily upgraded version of the generator that they both had invented, though this one created both energy similar in signature to the Chaos Energy for the warps and would still generate enough power to run the ship's functions for weeks without it recharging it's energy. Best of all, the energy made by the generator had no byproducts; the process it used to breakdown the compound it used for fuel also restored it to its original state; almost endless power from one batch of fuel. Almost. It would last about a year before it broke down into pure oxygen gas…maybe it did have a byproduct, but released back into the atmosphere of a planet, it was harmless.

Tails smiled at this. _"Cosmo would be happy that we were rescuing her without damaging the environments of planets that we pass by."_

Sonic snapped him out of his thoughts. "What do yah think of Eggman being sentimental and naming this ship after his grandfather, Tails?" he asked curiously. "Do you think that he's really turned over a new leaf?"

The fox pondered this a moment and, still unsure of an answer, explained what he had noticed. "I don't know. He's been so nice to Mobians lately, he's obviously a little more sentimental since he's naming the things he makes after things that were important to him, and he hasn't tried anything yet…but then again, he was almost _too _willing to let us go with his ship, even if he's getting a free endorsement from you, since you don't do those at all even when people offer to pay you. I wouldn't be surprised if he tries something while we're gone."

They were interrupted when they heard a sudden crash from the doorway behind them, and when they looked over they saw Bokkun standing holding a branch with three leaves from the plastic plant in the pot he had knocked over, one of the pieces of décor Eggman had given them with the ship to make it more pleasant. The little robot lowered the leaf a little and slowly checked if he was being watched.

"Or I guess he could try something now…" Tails muttered.

When he realized they were staring at him, Bokkun quickly raised the leaf to cover his face again until Sonic called him over, when he slowly put the branch down and gloomily drudged over.

"Oh, how did you know it was me? I had a great hiding spot, and then you found me." Bokkun complained as he plopped down next to the hedgehog and began to pout angrily.

"'Cause, little guy, you knocked over the plant you were hiding behind." Sonic chuckled as he patted the sad messenger on his back. "Look on the bright side; we didn't know you were on the ship until then."

"Well, yeah, I guess so…"

"And we didn't know you were listening to us."

"Yeah…"

"So you didn't do _too_ badly with your first time spying on us."

The robot got a big grin of pride on his face. "Oh, this isn't the first time. The Doctor had me watch you guys a lot on the way back last time, and once when we…were…back…from space…" He slowed down and began to laugh nervously as he realized what he had just blurted out, and saw the glares of the hedgehog and fox bearing down on him. "Hehe, no hard feelings, right?"

"Well, I guess there's no harm done?" Sonic begrudged and extended his hand with a friendly smile.

"I guess I agree." Tails muttered, still stung by Eggman's betrayal of their trust. "Although, what will happen if we leave Mobius at the mercy of this new Eggman for a year?"

"I don't know, little buddy. I just don't know." Sonic said, now more that a little worried. "Nothing we can do now, though, so we'll just have to deal with it when we get there."

"I guess you're right…" Tails said as he shut out the pictures of the worst possibilities from his mind.

__________

**Dormitory 4, **_**ECTF Gerald**_**…**

Maerick lay staring at the ceiling pondering the circumstances of the trip all the while feeling quite useless. He had little knowledge of the technologies used by these Mobians, as he had quickly discovered once he had entered the bridge, and was beginning to think all of the happenings in his life were just lucky. After all, he had been brought back to life by a chance encounter with someone he had met just before his death, he had been fortunate that the equipment Tails had for the analysis of Cosmo's seed was so similar to the stuff he had once used, and now he had been lucky enough Shadow was willing to help him at all now. At least he had found a weapon that worked almost exactly like a blaster rifle in the emergency armory of the ship. Another bout of good fortune.

"_It's so ironic that Robotnik put so many weapons and defenses into a trade ship. This thing is practically a warship on its own, not to mention the armory has enough weapons to arm a small army...I guess safety is a priority for him, but I don't know him that well…" _He stopped as he heard the intercom come on.

"You guys. I need you on the bridge right now." Tails explained.

"_I wonder what that's all about…"_ Maerick began as he pulled on his armor. On the way out he made sure to grab the rifle, though he wasn't sure if he would need it.

He finally came to the door of the bridge where he saw Tails standing next to Sonic as the veteran slowly found a place at the back of the group. The group had the expressions one would expect to see on someone after being woken up at what the clocks said was midnight. Shadow was wearing his usual scowl, Knuckles was crossing his arms, and Amy and Cream were trying curiously to see what was behind Tails back, while Maerick was instinctually gripping his weapon. Finally Tails stepped aside and revealed Bokkun smiling nervously. He gave a wave and then hid behind Sonic out of embarrassment.

"What's _he_ doing here?" Knuckles complained.

"Look, I know he's one of Robotnik's lackeys, but he could be useful later on. He says he knows the schematics of the ship pretty well, so he'll be able to help if we have to fix anything. He already helped me fix up a Chaos Emerald Locator from the ship's Foreign Power-source Detection System by calibrating to find energy produced from the Emeralds by combining-

"TAILS!" Amy scolded.

"Oh, sorry. Well, we're ready to activate the warp drive, anyway. The detector found the Emeralds clustered in a galaxy located thousands of light years away, which I'm calling Galaxy NA, so even with the warp we'll probably take a month to get there. So I decided we are going to have weekly work outs to make sure that we stay in shape."

Amy, Cream, and Bokkun groaned at this.

"Bokkun, you're a robot. Work outs shouldn't be a problem for you!" Cream giggled, causing Bokkun to blush.

"Yeah, well, I'm made for delivering messages, not for being a buff body-builder!" he protested.

Knuckles grunted and left to go back to sleep, though everyone could see that he was cranky from having to leave the Master Emerald behind, not from lack of sleep. He had tried to convince Tails to let him bring it, but the entire group had agreed that they needed to get into space as fast as they could, and Tails had pointed out there was nowhere to really keep it, since everything was so compacted in terms of room to keep things There was also the problem that there was no telling how the Chaos Energy around Cosmo would react to the fully restored Emerald, since on the trip back from the last encounter with the Metarex it had been in pieces.

"What's up with him?" Maerick looked questioningly at Tails.

Amy rolled her eyes at this and left with Cream following behind, slightly confused by her reaction. Shadow shook his head in disgust and walked over to check the monitors, and Sonic chuckled uncomfortably as he rubbed the back of his neck. He then walked over to talk to Shadow, or, rather, stand next to him. Tails shifted uncomfortably, unsure if he should give away information about his friend to the soldier. Friend or not, Maerick was still a stranger, and Tails realized that he couldn't let his impressions of the soldier cloud his judgment of that.

"Well, let's just say he feels like he's lost his purpose." The fox finally answered.

"I see. Well, sorry for causing a ruckus. I'll see you guys at breakfast." The soldier apologized as he began to leave, nodding at the two hedgehogs as he left.

Sonic turned and smiled for his goodbye while Shadow kept his back turned to the teen. Whether or not he had brought the boy back, or that he had discovered the answer to their largest problem, Shadow lost all respect for the boy when he asked a question that, to the ultimate life-form, had such an obvious answer for an experienced officer and war veteran. Tails said his goodbye, though he was still feeling awkward about the reactions of his friends, so he wanted to say more. Once the door slid shut, he walked over to the hedgehogs to find out what they knew.

"Hey, why did everyone treat Maerick like that?" Tails whispered the delicate question.

"Because, little guy. Amy still doesn't trust him - you know how she can get, Knuckles doesn't like how big the guy is since – unlike Eggman – this guy's in shape, and Cream listens to Amy."

"Well, what about you? It wasn't that big a deal; he was just asking a question, right?" The kitsune questioned, not bothering to ask Shadow since he would never speak about himself.

"Well, you're right, I guess. I don't know. It was just awkward…and…you know…anyway, I'll see you tomorrow, little bro." he waved off the question and sped off to his room. Shadow muttered goodbye and left, leaving the fox alone in the cabin. He sighed and walked over to the captain's chair and tried to find a reclining mechanism so he could try to get some sleep. He instead found a button with a picture of three "z"s inside a cloud. He pushed it, and jumped back as the chair's armrests folded out from the sides flat and then slid into the backing of the chair while it reclined flat and began to expand lengthwise, revealing a stretched section of cloth that joined the back of the chair to the bottom. Then the center of the headrest began to raise above the rest of it, making a pillow of sorts. Tails noticed a note that had fallen out of the folds of the cloth as it had extended.

It read: _"For you, fox-boy. Don't say I never think of you. Yours truly, Ivo Robotnik PS: There's a blanket in the compartment in the chair's base. The hatch to open it is a groove near the front."_

"_Maybe he is changing. Slowly, but surely nonetheless."_ He pondered as he took the blanket out and lay down on the bed. He then realized it reminded him of how his cot at his workshop, only it was better cushioned.

"_Man, it's so comfortable…"_ Tails thought as dreams overtook him with their sweet embrace.

__________

**Galaxy NA, located near the outer fringes of the solar system…**

He awoke with a splitting headache, unwilling to open his eyes as he heard the humming of his suit reactivating around him, along with the clanks of his metallic minion's footsteps. After a little while, he felt a gentle prodding at his side and a few mutterings of curiosity about the chain succession should he be dead. He should be dead, along with the others in this room, which should have been destroyed. Then he heard them discussing if they should "make sure the job was done".

"_Where had they heard that ridiculous animal saying?_" he wondered, cringing from the sudden pain of his headache. _"That wormhole…"_ the disoriented man remembered.

The man stood and opened his eyes, noting the two droids that were talking and that the rest of the crew was watching him intently. His armor was blood-red and covered him from head to toe, and in the center of the mask was a glass dome resembling a gem, which he had a larger version of in the center of his chest. A large, red cape flowed from the spines that jutted from its shoulders, and his helmet had horns on its sides that jaggedly curved upwards. He turned and confronted the mutinous robots, causing one to run into the crowd of the rest of crew while the other kneeled before him.

"He's alive! I never doubted you would pull through, Sir!" the kneeling droid lied.

Red Pine grabbed it by its neck and crushed the circuitry in it, permanently knocking the bot offline. He then threw the sparking skeleton to the wall and let the janitorial drones remove it.

"Where is the other traitor? Or must I punish you all one by one?

All the robots pointed at one droid who, when he pleaded his innocence, couldn't maintain a sentence without stammering or come up with an excuse that didn't contradict a previous one. Red Pine grabbed the arm of a soldier next to him and used the built-in laser to blast the insubordinate lackey. He then ordered the janitorial drones to clean up the mess and the rest of the soldiers to their posts.

After a few high-stressed minutes had passed with soldiers nervously tapping on keyboards and maintenance workers scrambling up and down the hallways, one of the soldiers approached the general.

"Sir, we have tried contacting Dark Oak for our report, but we could not reach him. Also, it appears that the dates are wrong…according to this it is after the time of reckoning. Yet the sensors are detecting animal life on the planet below; are they malfunctioning?"

"I doubt it." the general replied. "Dark Oak has failed, and I assume that hedgehog destroyed the others as well then."

"Sir, just because we can't contact the master doesn't mean he's dead-

"Dark Oak would die before letting the mission fail, and he even had gained possession of one of the emeralds before we fell through the wormhole. Also there is the matter of our spy, whose readings we can't detect any longer. The chemical device Dark Oak formed for her gave us her life signs as long as it connected to the Metarex interface channel, which was connected to Dark Oak. Since both the channel and the date have been lost, Dark Oak must have been as well." He rationalized.

"I see, sir. So what are your orders?"

"Tell the engineers to make a new interface channel that will work through the ship. Then order all remaining ships to invade this planet. We may have lost the Forestation battle, but this war is far from over." The hypocritical fiend began to chuckle coldly at his reference to the old Cascadian saying.

"Yes sir!"

__________

Little did Sonic know that he was about to get a blast from the past! What will Red Pine have done after a month of being left to his own plans? Tune in next time to find out! Please, if you have any criticism, questions, concerns, comments, suggestions, or any others, please send me a pm or submit a review. Anyway, thanks again for reading and I hope you enjoyed it!


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

A/N: Thank you, TailsLovesCosmo, seektorectify, and Ultra Orunitia for reviewing chapter 6. I do not own any references to Sonic X or its characters, Sega does.

Thanks to DC111 for catching some errors in this chapter so they could be fixed.

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_**ECTF **__**Gerald**_**, Hangar.**

Tails sat in the cockpit making the final programming adjustments to the last of the new planes he had built this past month. When he had first checked out the hangar, he had discovered it filled with Eggman's latest model of fighter drones, but the problem was that instead of the commercial versions, fighters so effective that Tails knew that the human organization GUN would have used, they were his personal badnik version. The engines had been so wasteful and so dependant on fossil fuels that they made the human car, the hummer, look as efficient as their new hybrid technology cars! To make matters worse, the weapons reminded him of why Sonic had such little trouble taking Eggman's minions down. In fact, Eggman had tried to use a bazooka as a weapon for the planes. A bazooka! Unguided missiles were useless in a dogfight, which he assumed they would be in if they encountered trouble in this new galaxy, and even if that wasn't the case, Eggman's bazooka shells would barely scratch even the most basic levels of armor. Had Eggman been _trying_ to get them killed? Knowing him, though, it was probably more he wanted the pride of saying that his personal design of the fighters had protected Sonic on his long journey. Why he took so much pride in such useless technology, though, was beyond Tails.

"_Maybe he just likes putting his build and face on his machines more than making them work." _Tails chuckled to himself. _"I mean, all of his badniks have bodies that are rounded, have long noses that look like carrots, and have mustaches painted on their faces…or maybe he just wanted us to die thinking that he's just that vain…I can never be sure where he's concerned…"_

"Hey, buddy. Whatcha…" Sonic came into the hangar and found Tails fiddling with the ship and stopped, staring at the plane he was in. "I-is that the X Tornado?"

Tails smiled proudly as he closed up the control panel in the cockpit and then jumped down to Sonic, his face beaming with pride. "Yep, and I also built copies of Amy's plane and Cream's plane."

Sonic's jaw dropped in amazement. "How did you do all of this in a month? With the busy schedule Amy's kept us on, we've all been up late doing _chores!_ I don't even want to think about how much time building for fun took up."

Tails grinned at his surrogate brother's reaction. "It was easier than you think; I had a lot of parts to use from Eggman's fleet." He pointed to a scrap heap in the corner. "The hardest part was trying to get the right parts from the planes."

Sonic then realized that Tails had huge bags under his eyes, and his cheery voice and smile seemed to be forced. "Tails, are you okay? How much sleep have you been getting?"

Tails stared blankly back at his friend. "Erm…I don't know. Enough. I've had bad dreams about that day, and I had to finish this. I've just…done nothing for too long, and I don't want to be forced to act again. The last time I was forced to do something because of my inaction I lost the one I loved! If I am being given a second chance, I am going to make sure that no one will pay for my mistakes again!" His eyes, previously void of emotion, became filled with tears and his jaw became tightened in self-loathing hatred as he stared through the ground next to Sonic's feet.

"Buddy, don't ever talk like that! It was never your fault; it was Dark Oak's fault for carrying his hatred so far. If anything, it's my fault for not destroying Dark Oak in that first battle with him. If I had been less cocky and treated him like a threat, maybe she would be alive…"

Tails looked at his friend's sorrow in complete surprise at the suddenness of his reaction. "Sonic, it's not _your_ fault. Dark Oak would still be alive if it wasn't for you and Shadow. Do you realize he would have killed Shadow on his own? He would have killed everyone in the universe! Sonic, you have no reason to be guilty. You shouldn't worry about those 'ifs', there isn't anything that can be done and everything happens to serve a purpose. Remember that." He stopped, realizing what he just said to his friend.

"Bingo, Buddy." Sonic grinned meekly, then shook his head and gave his classic smile. "Anyway, we need you on the bridge right now. We're coming out of the jump any moment now, and we're already picking up the Chaos Emeralds."

"Okay, I'll be right there." Tails replied as he set his tools down and hurried after his friend.

When Tails got to the bridge, he looked around and saw that everyone was eagerly waiting for him to tell them where they were going. He went over to the monitors and checked to see which planets the Chaos Emeralds had landed on. He then went to the database and located the interstellar com network that the OIPSAR had established (the Organization of Intergalactic Pioneers, Surveyors, and Recorders [pronunciation: **oyp'** săr]) and quickly found the planet guide for this galaxy. Lucky for the group, this was galaxy had been discovered for long enough that the slow organization had actually mapped it out. That or the locals were advanced enough to have already had a map of their galaxy to donate when they were "discovered". He scrolled down the screen until he found the description of the planet nearest to them that had an Emerald. He noted that the description did not meet the OIPSAR standard of having a minimum of 500 words describing all aspects of the planet; an odd mistake, he supposed.

"Planet Tes' La. A planet surrounded by violent electrical storms." he paused as he quietly chuckled to himself, seeing the irony of the planet's name. "All technology is permanently shut down by the high voltage of the storms. WARNING: Do NOT attempt to land for ANY reason. None have returned from the planet alive. At all. Ever. In the eons of our existence." Sonic, Amy, and Knuckles began to snicker.

"Okay. Enough." Shadow grumbled as the entire room became filled with laughter since everyone knew the organization had only been around for the equivalent of 20 years on Mobius or Earth.

"Oh, I needed that." Tails grinned as he looked at the monitor. "Anyway, I think we should hold off on that planet, all the same. We won't have any idea what's on the surface and-

"No, we can't wait." Maerick interrupted.

"WH-WHAT?! Why not? Do you want us to get killed down there? Think! We won't be able to use any technology, and there's no telling what's down there!" Amy immediately yelled at him; the two had realized during the past month that they were like water and oil: Maerick was calm and logical, while Amy at times was irrational and emotional, like now, and to make matters worse they both had tempers.

"If that's an issue, then I'll go by myself. I won't break my promise to my friend." He looked to Tails pleadingly, but the fox looked instead at his friends, saw their expressions, and shook his head.

"I agree with the boy." Shadow muttered. Everyone looked at him in surprise, leaving the room in a silent stalemate.

Finally Tails broke the silence that had filled the room. "Maerick, as much as I want to help you, I have to keep the safety of everyone in mind. Maybe on one of the planets we'll find out if anyone knows what's down there, but right now we don't have anything to go off of, and it seems that everyone other than you and Shadow want to do this. After we have a Chaos Emerald, we can warp down to the surface and back safely, but until then we'd be stranded there."

Each reason for avoiding the planet struck the soldier like a bullet, and once Tails had finished the explanation, he clenched his jaw and marched out of the room. Shadow promptly followed, leaving the room in a stunned stillness.

"Don't worry about him, buddy. He'll be fine." Sonic reassured the kitsune.

"I hope so, because I felt like I was just telling myself to wait to save Cosmo." He said, stunned and shaken.

It would be hours before anyone bothered to check in on Maerick, and when they did they found that both he and Shadow were missing. It would be then that Tails would check the hangar to find that one of the remaining Egg-planes was missing.

__________

**Planet Tes' La…**

Maerick staggered from the wreckage of the plane and fell to his knees next to Shadow, who stood with his arms crossed as he was surveying the landscape of the planet. The sky of the planet was light grey in color and illuminated by a faded-orange sun. Its light blocked out the view of the lightning storms, but the thunder resounded so continuously that it sounded like the roaring of a great waterfall. The landscape was also grey from the color of the soil, reminding Maerick of a landscape of volcanic soil. Shadow noted that there were trees resembling pines from Earth sparsely scattered throughout the horizon, with numerous mountains in all directions. The mountains cast ominous shadows into the valley and blocked any wind that may have blown there, creating an eerie calm in the valley. The crunching of movement on the gravel nearby reminded him to keep an eye on the teenager, and when he looked over his shoulder he saw that the boy had already begun to walk off toward one of the mountains.

"Where do you think you're going?" Shadow raised an eyebrow at the uncharacteristic impatience of the soldier.

"To find the other escape pod from the Seedrian refugee ship." he called back.

"The what?" Shadow tried to keep himself from sounding curious.

"When Cosmo and I tried to escape, the rest of my men and the group we had found split up from Sarge, Cosmo, and me to find survivors and then come here. I saw their escape pod launch just before Dark Oak…well anyway, I saw them escape, so now I need to find them and get them off this rock."

"I see, but I came here because there is a Chaos Emerald here and it is foolish to leave one behind, no matter what the OIPSAR says about its natural defense. I have no doubt the Metarex are already here, and if they aren't yet they will be. If you want to get off this rock alive, you'll help me find it." The hedgehog threatened.

The soldier stopped at this and turned around to face Shadow, who defiantly looked up at the boy that was almost twice his height. "Y-you promised you would help me find my-

"Wrong, I promised to help you get here, which I have. Why are you being such a temperamental teenager? Look at this rationally, like you normally do! If they even survived the crash when they got here, they would have been here the entire time we were chasing the Metarex. There is no way they survived!"

"I have to at least try to find them."

"What, you think that they will magically have found food and water on this barren planet? Or that their bodies would survive all this time? You are a fool. If you want to leave here alive, follow me." The hedgehog muttered, pulling out a box of thick silicone that held a portable Emerald tracking device.

Shadow removed the covering and placed the modified communicator on his wrist, like a watch, and then walked in the direction that the readings told him. Maerick looked back over his shoulder and, slowly realizing that he didn't even know where the escape pod had landed, gloomily trudged after Shadow like the "good soldier" would have done, blocking out his sadness and guilt. They marched on this way, Shadow in front with Maerick following a couple dozen paces behind, for a couple of hours until they came to the edge of the valley at the base of a mountain.

"_Now_ what?" Maerick despondently asked.

"Now we climb." The hedgehog replied. "Or is this too much work for the battle-hardened war veteran?" Shadow sneered, his attempt at the friendly taunting that Knuckles and Maerick had become accustomed to giving each other during the sparring matches Amy had set them up in.

Maerick smiled sadly at the remark, seeing the intention of the poorly executed sarcasm. "If that's what you think, then you are in for some disappointment. This old dog's been given some new tricks." He tried to tease back, though his voice still carried the anguish he tried to hide.

The two raced up the steep slope of the side of the mountain, quickly discovering the difficulty of climbing on gravel. Shadow kept from using the hover jets in his shoes to give the soldier at least a slight chance of beating him, though he almost slipped twice because of this. Maerick ran and wove up the slope with great speed, both from his knowledge of climbing hills from his time in the 392nd and from the vigor of his new youth. Even so, he only managed to stay with Shadow two thirds of the way before the ultimate life-form grew tired of running so slow and sprinted up the hill, leaving the soldier literally in the dust the jets from his shoes had made.

Maerick stopped and watched the hedgehog, slowly shaking his head and laughing as Shadow reached the top. Shadow quickly consulted the Emerald finder, searched the surprisingly flat summit a little while, and then proceeded to kneel down and reach into a crack in the ground. After he stood up, he walked over to the edge and held up the Emerald so that the soldier could see it. Maerick had begun climbing again when Shadow noticed some movement at the base of the mountain; the blur of a fleeting shadow on the sunbathed slope. Maerick noticed Shadow's grim expression and turned halfway around to look down the slope as well. They stood there for a couple of minutes until Maerick quietly pointed to a rock a couple of yards from them that the sound of gravel shifting could be heard. The two slowly crept up on the rock and were ready to attack whatever was on the other side when a small rodent climbed out from behind the rock, bearing a resemblance to a field mouse except for its yellow fur and two pairs of eyes.

Maerick lowered his weapon and shrugged. "Just a mouse."

Shadow grunted and walked up the slope. Maerick still had no idea why he wasn't using Chaos Control to warp them back to the ship, but he followed the hedgehog without asking questions. He looked over his shoulder at the mouse again as it stood on its hind legs and sniffed the air, its nose quickly twitching. Suddenly there was a rush of air and the mouse vanished in a quick shriek. Maerick stopped and tried to see what happened when he noticed a silhouette of something vaguely feline behind one of the rocks near where the rat had been. It slowly crept foreword until the sunlight revealed its white fur striped like that of a tiger with a spiky mane, large talons, an extremely wide maw with a smear of blood along the front, four beady eyes, and a two-tipped tail, which was similar to a rat's tail, flicked gently from side to side.

"Come on, Maerick. We don't have all day." Shadow stopped when he noticed he couldn't hear the boy following him.

"A Nexu…" he whispered, his mind filling with fear as he saw more shadows emerging from behind the rock. _"How the heck are there Nexus here?!"_ (The Nexu is the tiger from the Star Wars movie _Episode 2: Attack of the Clones_)

"What?" Shadow questioned as he turned around, stopping as he saw the monsters in the shade of the rock.

"RUN!" Maerick yelled at Shadow.

Shadow was about to as why he shouldn't fight when the soldier pulled the rifle of his back and fired a quick burst of rounds into the midst of the cats before running up the slope of the mountain. The cats easily dodged the rounds and then ran toward the duo. The hedgehog slowly backed up and threw one Chaos Spear that missed its target before he turned and chased after the soldier.

Shadow came up behind the soldier and tackled him while he held up the Chaos Emerald, looking at the mountain in the distance as the gem began to glow. "CHAOS CONTROL!"

Light engulfed them for a brief second, and then dispersed to reveal that they were on another hillside, though they could hear the shrieks of the now blinded Nexus in the distance.

"We need to find a cave or somewhere extremely dark; these aren't forest Nexus so they can't see in the dimly lit places, since their eyes are very poor for dilation."

"You mean like the one right above us?" Shadow smirked.

Maerick looked up and smiled with relief. "Yep. And don't think I didn't hear that; I'm just too tired to care right now."

"Fine then. Stop griping and let's get in." Shadow stood up and walked to the cave while Maerick grunted, stood, and finally staggered to the cave.

"H-how is it you can walk for t…ten miles, climb a mountain for th-three, run faster than a…a pride of N-Nexu, and then use…use Chaos Control…all without breaking a sweat?" Maerick asked through gasping breaths.

"_I_ am the Ultimate Life-Form. That is just what I do." He smirked as they entered the cave.

Suddenly the cave was illuminated by a flood of lights, momentarily blinding the duo as they heard the click of guns turning off their safeties and cocking to fire. "Drop you're weapons and then don't move." A voice came from behind the lights.

__________

Whew. Alright, only a few more chapters before the end of this "season" of regular updates for _To Bring You Back_, and I hope you've enjoyed them. If you ever have any criticism, comments, suggestions, etc. please feel free to submit a review, send a pm, or e-mail me. Thanks for reading, and see you guys next time!


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

A/N: My apologies for the delay; I really shouldn't have taken so long. This is it, the season finale. Enjoy! Thanks to TailsLovesCosmo, DC111, and Zoran Prower, and warriors mind for reviewing Chapter 7. I do not own any references to Sonic X or its characters, Sega does. Also, the weapons description for _ECTF Gerald _is actually weapons array for an Akkan Class Battlecruiser, so that reference is owned by Stardock Games and Ironclad Games.

__________

**Planet Tes' La…**

"Put down your weapon, or we'll shoot." barked a gruff voice.

With the lights still blaring, Maerick realized it was useless to try to resist captors they couldn't see. He quickly laid his rifle down on the cave's floor, and placed his hands on the back of his helmet.

Shadow heard the gun touch the ground and snarled at this act of cowardice. "You fool, what are you doing? We can take them!" But it was too late, for one of their unknown enemies ran foreword and grabbed the gun, pointing his at the hedgehog as he picked it up and scurried off and began conversing with his comrades.

"Don't be a fool. We don't know how many of them there are, we can't see them to begin with, and they may not be enemies." Maerick whispered angrily back.

"Right. They threatened to shoot us because they want to be friends. Oh, and if there's a next time, this is why we leave when we can." Shadow muttered.

"They don't know that we aren't here to hurt them. Besides, from the sound of the clicks we heard and what I saw of the gun that man was carrying, these people are armed with the newest AstrInc. Icron-Class 2 Big Game Hunting Rifles. Those rifles were brand new technology that was illegal on the regular market because of the amount of firepower they have, meaning these people probably have the know-how to use them."

"How much firepower do they have?" Shadow murmured curiously.

"In a testing accident, a rifle fired at an LAAT heavy military transport by mistake; this caused the ship to explode when the round penetrated through its armor, two of the soldiers on board, and the outer casings of the fuel cells."

"…"

"Also, its Aim-Assist function has an internal computer to make adjustments to the barrel position, so the gun can be used for hitting extremely agile creatures, like the Nexus. This made it accurate enough to fire on a squad of soldiers from 300 yards away without missing. Combine that with the 3000 rounds-per-second firing rate of the newer Class 2 version, and the gun became too dangerous for civilians and far too expensive for the Republic to purchase for military use. So it was outlawed; I guess we were lucky the separatists didn't buy any since they had the money for such an investment."

"That kind of firepower seems to be overkill for a hunting rifle." Shadow observed.

"Yes, it was only a short while after the Class 2's development we discovered the company was selling weapons to the Black Sun Pirates off the books. Needless to say they were shut down just two years after their creation and completely wiped from the public domain." Maerick replied.

"Well, that doesn't do us much good, because these guys don't seem to care about that. I could still take them."

"Yes, but they would shoot me full of holes first. You may survive, but I won't." Maerick said half-jokingly. "I hope we can find another-

"No talking! Say one more word, and I swear I'll drop you!" Apparently their captors were done talking.

They stopped, and everyone stood still for another few minutes, as if waiting for something.

"_What are they doing?" _Shadow became frustrated. _"I'm tired of standing here waiting for nothing to happen!"_ He stopped as he heard new voices taking to the rest.

"Turn off the lights. We don't treat our friends like pirates." Immediately the lights shut off, revealing five people in the large cavern in front of the duo.

Three of the "captors" were clad in the 392nd's signature white armor bearing a silhouette of the Republic's symbol on the chest, while the other two wore short-sleeved vests with a mixture of camouflage and black with long, tight camouflage pants.

"Biome, Slick, Snipe! So good to see you guys!" Maerick exclaimed as he ran over and tackled the first two of the soldiers, though Snipe stood off to the side smiling as he shook his head.

"Sir, great to see you." Biome finally said after a moment of compassion-filled silence.

"Wow," Maerick replied as they removed their helmets. "you guys haven't changed a bit!"

"Yeah, but you have." Snipe sniggered.

"We _were_ wondering why you sounded so…shrill compared to normal, Sir, when we saw your armor. But now we see why." Slick clarified.

"Long story. In any case, I've kept my promise to you guys, but there's still one more that I need to keep. Where's Galaxina? I have to tell her something…"

"Oh, right. We sent them into the cave…GALAXINA! YOU CAN COME OUT!" Biome, of all people, called to the back of the cave.

Out of the shadows stepped a young lady clad in a torn blue dress, similar in fashion to Cosmo's, who had blue hair and a large, white flower on the top of her head. "Nice to see you again, Maerick." She bowed.

"Same to you, ma'am." He saluted and then began chuckling. "What brought on this sudden bought of formality?"

"Sorry, it's been a while, and I wasn't sure if you were still angry about-

"Don't even finish that thought." he interrupted. "It never crossed my mind, and it won't ever again. I came here to keep my promise to you and my men, so that's what I'm going to do."

"You brought Cosmo here?" she asked, hopeful

"Um…not quite." He quickly looked around and his gaze settled on Shadow. "But first things first, so that we aren't rude, I'd like to introduce my friend Shadow the Hedgehog."

Shadow stared at her and gave a slight nod his head, still not having moved since she came in.

"_Odd." _Maerick thought. _"He doesn't have his arms crossed or his normal frown. He just looks…puzzled…"_

Galaxina took the initiative to introduce the two newcomers to her group. "These two men over here are Baz and Traf. Baz is the shorter one with the beret, and Traf is the taller one with the glasses and the backpack. Baz was a former marine for your Republic before the Clone Wars, while Traf is the business man who hired him as a bodyguard after Baz retired."

Baz nodded to them, a man with a face covered in scars and wrinkles, grayed hair, and a unique uniform that seemed a cross between a soldier's and general's uniform., with the soldier's suit but without the helmet (you can look up "Old Republic Soldier" on Google), giving him a gruff visage that reminded Maerick of one of the Jedi he had seen at the trial.

Traf stepped foreword, a man clad in a suit similar to an admiral's uniform, with brown hair in a short haircut. "We were coming back from a hunting trip with our prizes – three Nexu that we were going train to be guard animals – when we crashed here. Biome, Slick, and Snipe saved us from both the wreckage and the escaped Nexu. In the crash, though, Baz took a blow to his throat, and has lost the ability to speak because of it. Don't be fooled by the big muscles or big gun; he's actually quite comforting to have listening to you talk. I on the other hand, am the former owner and founder of AstrIncorporated until it…folded as a company. An honor and pleasure to meet you Maerick, I'm Traf Zermoza." He smiled and shook the Lieutenant's hand quickly.

"_So that's how they have those guns…" _ Maerick realized."You sure are…good at speaking without practicing, aren't you?"

"Oh yes; comes with the trade. I took numerous impromptu classes to learn the skill, but after my CEO caused the collapse of the company with his under-handed deals…well, I tend to go off on tangents sometimes. I can be quite sporadic in my speech." He shrugged.

"We can tell…but don't worry; I think you can fix that." Shadow recovered, trying to be pleasant, drawing a curious glance from Maerick.

Baz walked over and gave Traf a nudge, nodding over toward the hills. Traf quickly looked at him, then out the mouth of the cave and grimaced.

"Well, gentlemen, it seems your admirers didn't want to give up so easily, and are now rushing down the mountain on the other side of the valley toward us, and with their children, of course." Traf said, trying in vain to cheer up the group.

Maerick stared at him. "How many children are we talking, Traf?"

"About…23, 24. It's really hard to say, they've been breeding a lot since we crashed. Over 20 for sure, but no more than 32."

Shadow glared at the man. "So you're telling me there could be 35 of those beasts?"

"Hehe, well, yeah. But don't worry; I have some extras of these rifles!" Traf shrugged once more as Baz went over to a stack of crates and pulled out two rifles with two small boxes of compacted ammunition. "Unfortunately, we only have the stun rounds left to use as ammo, and they aren't very accurate, so we'll all have our work cut out for us. At least we'll have the lights to blind them. Speaking of which, here are some pairs of Light Filtrators®, courtesy of the last inventions of AstrInc!"

Snipe smirked at the businessman. "Man, give it up. Your business is dead. Deal with it."

Shadow let out a chuckle at this. "You have a good sense of humor, don't you?"

Snipe walked over to the hedgehog and looked down at him. "Well aren't you a little guy. Thanks for that, but I already knew it, thanks to them." He glared around the room.

"I was trying to pay a complement, and don't call me little again or I'll" He threw a Chaos Spear at the wall, leaving a huge scorch mark, "do that to you."

Snipe held his gaze for a few tense seconds, but then burst into outright laughter. "I know I'm gonna like you!"

Everyone else cringed as they realized that the two had made friends, two _very _sarcastic and blunt people; they knew that someday they would regret this meeting. Traf ended the shocked silence.

"Alright, so Maerick, Baz, Biome, Slick, Snipe and I will stay here to fight the beasts, while Galaxina and Shadow will salvage everything from the back of the cavern." He said, indicating a passageway at the back of the cave. "Shadow, keep her safe and get back here so we can all warp out of here. Everyone got that?"

The group nodded, and rushed to their tasks, knowing that every passing second brought a pack of their worst nightmares that much closer to them.

__________

_**ECTF Gerald, Bridge…**_

"Tell me; how could that _boy_ be this irresponsible?!" Amy paced with anger.

Tails was trying in vain to calm down the fuming hedgehog. "Amy, I know you're upset, but yelling won't make anything better. The best thing we can do right now is wait for them to come back."

"Oh yeah? What if they don't ever come back, like the rest of the people who went there?"

"Shadow's with him, and I don't think he's the type to just give up when the odds are against him. They'll be fine, Amy. Please, just sit down for a little while and relax." Sonic joined in, talking as he leaned up against a wall with his eyes shut.

Amy looked at Sonic and, seeing that arguing would be pointless, she walked over to a chair and sat down. Knuckles, Cream, and Bokkun walked over and the four talked while Sonic pulled Tails aside.

"Buddy, I need to ask you something."

"What is it, Sonic?" Tails inquired curiously.

"Did you put tracers in all of the Emerald trackers?"

"Yes."

"And could you locate one, if say it was behind a wall of electricity?" Sonic began to smile a little as he saw Tails realize what he was asking.

"Oh, I see. Well, hypothetically, if it was still on I could. Let me guess, they took one."

"Bingo."

Tails walked over to the console by the wall and pulled up a program that showed the _Gerald_'s location, the location of the trackers on the ship, and two beacons below the ship, one was shown with a "last know location", but the other was located a large distance away.

"Well, it appears that the shuttle also had beacon in it, and that they are some distance from the wreckage of the crash of the ship. It looks like they are fine, and…" He pulled up the file for tracking Emeralds, "it looks like they have the Emerald too. So they'll be back soon, I think."

Sonic smiled and patted Tails on the shoulder. "See buddy, they're fine. We had nothing to worry about."

"_How can he always tell what I'm thinking?" _Tails wondered. "Yeah, and thanks, Sonic." He smiled at his best friend.

"No problem, Tails." Sonic smiled back and gave him a thumbs up, which Tails returned.

Just then, sensors began beeping and an alarm went off. "WARNING, UNIDENTIFIED WARSHIPS INBOUND."

Tails rushed over to his chair and brought up the radar on the big screen at the front of the room, and everyone got up to look.

"It looks like an army of ships…is there anyway to get a look at them?" Knuckles asked.

"Hold on, let me just access the cameras on the hull…there we go. It will be on screen…right about…no." He stopped and stared at the feed from the camera, horrified by what he saw. The screen showed a large Metarex warship and fifteen smaller cruisers heading toward them with swarms of fighters circling the fleet.

"No, it can't be…" Knuckles said, shocked.

"Is that really them? After all this time?" Amy questioned, disheartened.

"Chao, chao…" Cheese replied sadly.

"Oh no, the Metarex are really back? What do we do? WHAT DO WE DO?!" Bokkun started running around the Bridge with his arms flailing.

Tails snapped out of his shock. "It's okay, Bokkun. We beat them once, we can do it again. Amy, Cream, Sonic. They have a lot of fighters, which will be too hard for the large guns of this ship to hit. We need to get out there in our fighters and shoot them down to protect the ship. Knuckles and Bokkun, are you two going to be fine being in charge of the ship?"

"Yep. I got this guy to help me." Knuckles smiled back.

"I know this ship up and down. Dr. Eggman programmed me with the plans and with instructions on how to use it." Suddenly the little messenger stood at attention and started talking again, except he spoke with Eggman's voice instead. "Hello there, my friends. If you are listening to this, you have found Bokkun and are being attacked, so you need to know how to defend yourselves. The ship has been outfitted with 2 fore-mounted Pulse Lasers, 1 Heavy AutoCannons, 4 starboard-mounted Heavy Pulse Lasers, 2 port-mounted Heavy Pulse Lasers, and 2 port-mounted Heavy AutoCannons, all of these are programmed for auto-targeting that has a manual override to attack specific targets. Unfortunately I did not have time to install anti-aircraft counter measures, but to make larger ships easier targets there is a fore-mounted Ion Bolt cannon that will disable the weapons, shields, engines, and anything else electric on the ship for a short time. Well, I hope you use these weapons wisely, Fox-boy, so that you can keep your promise to me. Good luck!"

After laughing for a few seconds, Eggman's recording ended, causing Bokkun to fall to the ground. Cream and Knuckles rushed over to help the robot up, causing him to blush furiously.

"Whoa, that felt really weird!" He started laughing nervously and got to his feet. Just then, the ship started shaking and Metarex fighters flew by the window of the Bridge. "Good luck, you guys!" He yelled as the Tails and the rest rushed toward the Hangar. "What do we do now?" He looked up at the red echidna.

"We get to work on shooting those cruisers down." Knuckles lifted the robot up and put him on Tails chair, though he could still barely reach the controls.

"It's not fair, why couldn't Dr. Eggman make me taller?" Bokkun whined indignantly.

Knuckles laughed. "I don't know, but it's okay. We all still like you."

And with that they prepared to fight for their lives once more.

__________

Uh-oh, how are the clones, Maerick, Baz, and Traf going to handle almost 30 Nexus when three nearly killed Shadow and Maerick? Why did Biome say "them" when he was talking about Galaxina? Will Shadow and Galaxina get back in time to make sure they get out of the caves alive? Will Sonic and the gang be able to beat the new threat of the Metarex? If he used Bokkun like that, could Eggman have programmed any other machines with surprises for the group?

Well, guys, that's it for now. See you next summer when the action returns, only in _To Bring You Back_.Thanks for reading and for all of the constructive criticism and encouragement in your reviews; it has made this experience that much more enjoyable. Have a great year, everyone, and see you all next time.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

A/N: Well, I'm back, and will be updating again. I am truly sorry for the long wait; I have been plagued by a combination of school, college apps, scholarships, major writer's block, and recent technical difficulties. I thought it would be smart to try to finish the story before submitting it again, but I think that it was too idealistic. So I am really, really sorry that this has taken so long to start again. Anyway, just as a notice, I will be slightly modifying old chapters after this "season" is done, so in the off chance someone decides to reread previous chapters the extra description/corrections/dialogue _is_ new: you aren't going crazy. Anyway, on with the story. Disclaimer still applies.

Thanks to TailsLovesCosmo for reviewing the last chapter way back when.

**Space above planet Tes' La, Bridge of Metarex Frigate…**

Slouching in his armed, high-backed command chair, the Metarex captain warily eyed the picture on the bridge's front monitor. Robot aids sat hovering with their disk-like bases, tapping at keyboards with the talon-like tips of their multi-jointed arms, and occasionally rotating their spherical heads about their pip-like bodies. Surrounded by almost thirty of such droids seated at computers that lined the protective glass of the bridge's dome-like window, the captain sat a tier above the rest of his aides on a platform for his chair's pedestal. The captain proudly regarded his minions before returning his attention to the monitor. The picture showed a ship covered with heavy armaments and that had its hull branded with a vaguely familiar insignia, eerily cheerful and goofily mustachioed.

"Call back the scouts, we have visual," The captain paused briefly, stroking the bottom of his spike-like chin. "391, tell the crew to prepare to change course and engage the ship. 294, send a connection to Red Pine, I think he'll want to know that we've spotted possible opposition. And 235, signal three cruisers to come about and arm their weapons, but have the rest return to Sector 7; one lone ship cannot challenge the superiority of the Metarex."

"Yes, sir," Droids 235 and 294 simultaneously replied to their mechanical captain, immediately beginning their furiously tapping on the hologram key interfaces of their computers.

"Sir," 294 monotonously reported after a few seconds of work, "communication channel with Red Pine is coming on screen."

The picture of the _ECTF Gerald_ quickly vanished and Red Pine appeared, the droid captain swiftly knelt down into a bow. "…requires that we withdraw the surface troops at once."

The captain waited patiently for his leader to finish with his battle plans. _This must be for the battle above Theltiar, the planet with the insurgents. Why are we retreating, though? We've already taken five planets in just these few months, so why can't we beat a few guerrilla rebels…_

Red Pine continued without noticing the camera, his attention directed off-screen. "But as the troops withdraw, leave a brigade to be defeated by the rebels to give them confidence. Also, I want the Planetary Bombardment Platforms that we made from Pale Bay Leaf's designs to be moved into position above the atmosphere, and with that new cloaking field activated. Once the rebels resurface to celebrate their victory, we will use the PBPs to wipe them off the face of the planet! After we're done scorching the entire surface, we'll take our second Chaos Emerald from the rubble of their bunkers."

_That's our Commander, always one step ahead of the enemy!_ The captain felt his circuits buzz with extra life. _I never doubted him for a second!_

Red Pine turned his attention to the captain. "What is it now? I am very busy; if you are wasting my time, Captain, I will reduce you to scrap metal faster than you can say 'Oops' and have you replaced with droid that actually has some reasoning ability, do you understand?"

Still kneeling, the captain began to tremble, unable to meet his leader's gaze. "Y-y-yes, s-s-sir! W-we have sighted a ship with this insignia on it…" a picture of Eggman's symbol was brought up on the monitor as the captain calmed his circuits. "Do you want us to engage or continue bringing our cargo back to base?"

Red Pine eyed the symbol. "Could it truly be? Them…here?" He paused, leaving the captain in nerve-wracking silence highlighted by the hum of electricity. "Captain, engage. Terminate the target with extreme prejudice. These are the animals that murdered our … _precious_ Leader. Show no mercy! And…Captain…I want you to test our new weapon on them. They will undoubtedly launch fighters, so you will administer our first field test. Do you understand?"

The captain stood and saluted with his scythe-like arm. "Yes, Sir!"

**Aboard the **_**ECTF Gerald**_**…**

As he climbed into the cockpit of his recently finished _X-Tornado II_, Tails slowly brushed his hands across the displays and controls, sighing with remembrance as he eased himself into his chair.

_At long last, I am back in the cockpit of my plane. I haven't flown since ... since Cosmo was alive…"_

While the quiet drone of the engines grew louder, Tails quickly turned the knobs and flipped the switches to activate the controls, and the hum of the engines activating gradually became a roar. As he heard the hangar doors open, he glanced quickly over his shoulder while Cream and Amy flew out into space. He slowly began to smile with pride.

_See, there was never a doubt. Even though they were made from scrap pieces, they still fly better than anything Eggman's made yet!_

He quickly flipped the launch sequence trigger. Adrenaline pumped through his veins as he felt his ship begin to move foreword. As the thumping of his heart filled his ears, he gazed out at the space before him, hi eyebrows furloughed as he took note of a nearby asteroid belt and began making plans on how to fight the Metarex drones. He felt his chest fill with the burning anticipation to feel, at long last, the exhilaration of flying once more.

_This is it_, he thought as the _X-Tornado II_ lined up on the runway. He silently counted down the launch as the thrusters roared, fully alive now. Then he was in the expanses of space once more. Once clear of the ship, he flipped on his communications console, Amy's voice, tinged with annoyance, immediately filling his ears.

"…ails!…TAILS! Are you out here yet!"

The fox cringed. "If you didn't hear me answer before, that means I wasn't there yet. No need to yell!"

"I'm not yelling yet, but I can if you want me to," she calmly retorted.

"Please stop you two…" Cream timidly tried to change the subject. "Tails, the Metarex fighters are gone. It looks like they went back to four bigger ships over by the asteroids…"

Tails pondered this as he maneuvered his ship to line up with the pair. Once he caught up, he waved to Cream and Amy. "Hey you guys. Okay, that means we just gotta be careful and fight the big ships quick. They have big, slow guns, so we'll be hard to hit if we just fly fast and dodge, okay?"

"Okay," they chimed in together.

The three broke off in different directions, each taking one of the smaller cruisers. As the ships came into view, it became clear that this was some form of transport convoy, the larger ship's bulky, box-like hull probably made to carry cargo.

_Or tons of fighters_. Tails grimaced. _Hopefully it's just cargo. That also means it probably has the chaos emerald on board._

As they approached the convoy, Tails could start to make out the surface of the hulls of the ships He quickly realized that there were no anti-strike craft defenses on the ships, that they only had larger cannons for frigate warfare.

_With luck_, thought Tails, _we may even get the larger ship to shoot one of the smaller while trying to hit us!_ And with that he rolled left and put his cruiser in his sights. _Man, these small ones just look like spikes…_

As he dove down and flew along the length of the ship, he fired the laser cannons at anything and everything that could possibly be a gun. Or something important. Like the engines at the back of the ship, twin cylinders extending just beyond the bases of the thin, pyramid-like cruisers.

_Weird, they aren't firing at us yet, and I don't see any windows on this; I have no clue where the bridge is! How can I take down a ship with a fighter if I can't attack the bridge?_ He turned around to the ship's left side to make another pass from the engines to the tip, but as he started down the side of the ship he accidentally squeezed off a cluster of shots at the hull of the ship. _Dang it! I need to be more careful; I can't just waste my ammo trying to shoot at a thick-hulled cruiser!_

Then the rounds struck the ship, and while most dissipated when they made contact, one punched a hole in the hull. _What?_ Tails banked hard right, swinging away from his pass to get a better look. He immediately noticed that the round had impacted and cracked something in the hull, and that the cracks had spread out in a perfect square.

_The windows look like the hull! And the cruiser doesn't seem to have shields, so we can just attack the hulls to find the windows!_ Tails grinned as he fumbled with the controls of the radio, eager to tell his friends the good news.

"Amy we-"

"Tails, there's no way in on these things! I don't know where I'm supposed to shoot! How can they even see if the entire thing is like a giant shell? Do they use cameras? I mean-"

"Amy, the windows are built to look like part of the hull! Fire at the hull and you'll find the windows to attack!"

"Oh, okay! That makes this SOOO much easier! Now all I have to do is-"

"Great, I'll talk to you later Amy," Tails chuckled silently to himself. _Man, she is so full of energy! Oh well, that's why we love her; without her life would be too quiet. _

The console began beeping furiously at the happy fox, the mechanical voice disrupting his thoughts. "Warning, missile lock-on detected. Initiate evasive maneuvers."

The fox reflexively slammed the control stick foreword to dive below the bottom of the cruiser's hull, circling under the ship and darting toward the asteroids he had spotted earlier. Cold fear washed over him as he eyed the radar, a small blip appearing somewhere behind him.

"Amy! Cream!" He shouted at his radio. "If you guys can hear me, get to the asteroids, the ships are firing anti-aircraft missiles! We can lose the missiles there! Amy, are you there? Cream….come on, guys, answer!" He glanced at the monitor. _The missile's still two hundred meters away, so I should be able to get to the field…_

The aggravated radar began beeping at him again. When he checked it, four more dots had appeared, two pairs coming at his flanks from opposite sides. _Oh crud, I'm gonna be boxed in!_ He pulled the craft left and opened the throttle wide, rushing head first toward two of the dots. The blackness of space and dots of debris become blurs as one second, then two passed before he came into visual range of the two dots. It was Cream's orange fighter with a needle-like missile chasing close behind.

"C-Cream?" The fox realized his mistake and flipped on the communication channel. "Wait, Cream, bank left and I'll shoot down the missile. Got it?"

"Y-yeah, thanks Tails. Then I'll do the same for you!"

When he got into range, Tails lined up behind the missile pursuing Cream and fired two rounds into the engine block, causing its fuel and payload to explode into a crimson red flash.

"Wow, I wonder what kinda explosives these guys are using? I've never seen an explosion like this before…" Tails murmured to himself.

Cream quickly banked around and came up behind Tail's missile and shot it down.

"Did you say something Tails?"

"No, I was just noticing that the missiles make red explosions. I wonder what kind of explosives they use…"

"Well, that is all well and good, but does anyone care about ME? I'm still getting chased out here!" Amy's voice broke into the channel, her shouting tinged with an air of panic.

"Don't worry Amy, we'll come get you." Cream said, trying to calm her friend down.

"Don't bother, you're already in view. I'm gonna head toward our ship, and you guys shoot down this thing!" Amy's composure was quickly breaking down.

"Just calm down, we'll be right there." Tails was already turning hard to his right.

"I can't calm down, it's GAINING on me! I've only got a few more feet before it hits!"

"Okay, just open your throttle all the way and we'll take care of it." He cut off his channel before she could respond again and set off in pursuit, taking a more direct route to the ship to cut them off.

The missile quickly came into view, and Tails steadied his ship. They were moving at an angle, so he would likely only have enough time to take one shot.

"Hang on, I almost got a lock on it."

"Tails, if I hang on any longer I'll be SPACE JUNK! Just shoot it already!"

She was right, even if the missile locked on, there was no guarantee that it would move quick enough to save Amy. The only chance would be to shoot it down without missiles. Tails prepped his lasers to fire. Amy's ship was already almost to his firing line, the missile close behind.

_I've only got one shot. This had better work!_ He fired a burst of three rounds once the nose of Amy's ship crossed his path, which slammed into the tip of the warhead and caused it to explode into another red cloud.

"YEAH! Now that was good shooting, Tails!"

"Thanks Amy, and you're welcome." He paused as he passed through what was left of the missile's explosion. _The red cloud…something's odd…it almost seems like it's grainy…_

"Earth to Tails. Come in, Tails! Let's get back to the ship before they fire something else at us!"

Yeah, you're right. Alright guys, let's get back to the hangar."

**Aboard the **_**ECTF Gerald**_**…**

Knuckles slowly massaged his temples to vent his frustration. "What do you mean you still haven't found the controls for the weapons? You're holding the manual, you little pipsqueak!"

Bokkun poked his head over the dusty, hard cover volume in his hands. "You try finding one section in a 2000 page manual with no index or table of contents!"

"No table of…who writes a book with no-

"Someone like the Doctor who has an enormous long-term memory. We should remember to tell him to add that, because not everyone is as good at remembering things as he…"

Knuckles inhaled slowly, then shut his eyes as he tried to feel the gentle warmth of the Master Emerald's energy flowing through the ship, then counted to ten, then exhaled. "Please stop talking and get back to looking, Bokkun."

"Oh sorry. I really need to figure out how to stop rambling. The Doctor says I talk too much about his plans and that I-

"BOKKUN!"

"Right, on it!" The little purple goblin jerked his finger back to skimming the pages as the echidna continued to look over every button in the controls.

"What's going on in here? You two haven't killed each other yet, have you?" Amy interrupted the momentary silence. She marched into the bridge, arms folded, followed by a very weary fox and rabbit.

Knuckles spun around to face the returning crew. "What? What is it, Amy? Why haven't you guys taken off yet?"

"We already did, you big lug nut! Don't tell me you two still have been sitting here twiddling your thumbs while we've been getting shot at!"

"No!" Knuckles face was just a shade lighter than the rest of his fur. "We've been looking for the weapons contr-

"Hey guys, come look at what I found! There's a control room for the weapons systems." Sonic came jogging up behind the three pilots, all smiles as usual.

_So that's where he…_Knuckles paused. "Great job, Sonic! See, we found the way we can get back the emerald the Metarex have!"

"Wait, what-"

Knuckles quickly marched passed the stunned hedgehog and led the way to the room. Well, the first stretch of the way, anyway. After a little while, Sonic led them to a small alcove in one of the hallways lined with computer terminals and three large monitors with readouts and one displaying the Metarex ship surrounded by cross hairs.

"Well, I don't know anyone but Eggman who puts something like this in the middle of nowhere, but oh well." The hedgehog shrugged.

Tails quickly went to work getting the weapons on line. "Alright, let's go get an emerald!"

"Um…Tails?" Cream slowly pointed at the monitors.

Amy followed her finger to the lock-on display. "Tails, the ships are pulling away! If we don't do something, they are going to get away with the emerald!"

Tails smiled. "Well, I guess we have to stop them then. You guys fly the ship, and Sonic and I will handle the guns!"

As everyone hurried to their assigned tasks, Sonic stood admiring his long time friend and brother-figure. _Even if this adventure doesn't give us anything more than an adventure, I think it's been good for him. He's got his confidence back, and I think he's even a little happy again._

"Sonic, come on! We gotta get to work."

"Gosh, so bossy Tails. I mean, yessir, Mr. Prower, Sir!" the hedgehog saluted the fox and began to march with his arms swinging ridiculously at his sides.

Tails' face melted into laughter as he eyed the hedgehog. "Ha ha-ha aha ha! C-come on Sonic, knock it off. We-we got to get to work!" He slowly turned back to the monitors, taking deep breaths as he still clutched his sides.

_Yeah, no matter what happens, I think this will be a good experience for Tails._ The hedgehog set about trying to arm the laser cannons. _Now then, it's time for you to start to pay for what you did to Tails, Metarex. This time, no one else is gonna die because of you!_

Thanks again for your patience, you guys, and sorry for the wait. As always, comments, criticisms, suggestion, etc. are welcome, and I hope you have a good day!


	10. Chapter 10

A/N: Continuation of the continuation chapter. Awkward repetitiveness intended. My apologies for the weirdness, I'm quite tired at the moment. Disclaimers still apply.

Thanks to Epsilon Team Captain Hande, Brandon259, and TailsLovesCosmo for their kind reviews.

Figured it out: POV Markers are staying now.

**Planet Tes' La: Unknown Cave…**

The men stacked anything they could find to reinforce the makeshift barricade. The Beasts were still on the other side of the valley, but that only gave them a few minutes, even considering the slopes' loose gravel surface. The plan was to hold out until Shadow and Galaxina returned with the Chaos Emerald and got them back to the _Gerald_ before the Nexu tore them all to pieces.

_At least we got weapons that give us a chance…_ Maerick assured himself, eyes darting across the layout of the defenses.

The cave's entrance itself was not very large, probably only large enough for two or three Nexus to enter at a time, but that was still two or three a second with how fast they run. The "room" they were set up in had a dome-shaped ceiling, with the cave narrowing at the entrance to the back tunnel that led to the inner caverns where the party slept. Oddly enough, there were few stalactites and stalagmites in this part of the cave, probably from the lack of moisture on the planet. Nothing to worry about normally, but the barrenness left little cover. The group had improvised by leaning metal plating scraps against the bulkier remains of wreckages, creating make-shift barricades to form a semicircle of protection from the front of the cave. The floodlights that the group had used on Maerick and Shadow stood in a gap in the middle of the barricade, dividing the two sections.

Maerick turned back to the cave opening. "Alright, listen up." His mind was whirring with plans and possibilities. "We have to hold them off as long as we can. Try to take down the first ten while they're on the slopes and then let them feed into the cave. Keep firing until I give the signal. When I do, I'll switch on the floodlights and blind the beasts, which will make them easier targets. We hold out until Shadow and Galaxina return, you got it?"

"Yes, Sir!" The group saluted and returned to the barricade. By now the Nexu were probably half-way to the cave. Biome jumped as Snipe surprised the group when he fired off a round, but a moment later they heard a yelp of a stricken beast.

"Snipe, you get one?" Biome anxiously eyed the opening as he looked for signs of a dead feline.

"Do you really need to ask?" Snipe grinned and fired another round, followed by another yelp.

Maerick paused. Two of the Nexu were down in as many seconds; perhaps they would be able to beat them after all…

"Crud, they're in the valley. I can't shoot 'em now. We'll have to wait for 'em." Snipe quickly took apart his rifle and packed it in its bag. "Alright, where can I get one of those cheating sticks?"

"The rifles are over here." Biome grabbed one and circled around the barricade to the sniper.

"Hm. Weighting's not bad. Decent scope. I can live with using this."

"You'll use it if you want to live, nitwit. Stop yakking and get into position!" Slick spat as he watched the opening.

_Alright, let's see how this goes…_ Maerick tapped the stock of the gun with his fingers, adrenaline zipping through his body as the more than two dozen hunters charged their human prey.

T*B*Y*B

From deeper in the cave, Galaxina struggled to keep up with Shadow, who was doing his best to run slow enough for her pace.

"Would you please slow down, Shadow? I am not built to run!" Galaxina stopped to lean on a rock as she brushed one of her flower's petals out of the corner of her eye, panting heavily.

Shadow jerked to a stop and turned around. "More? You still can't keep up? Hmph. How about _I_ just go grab the emerald and bring it here. I'll have it back before you're done resting. We can kill two birds with one stone."

Though he had meant it with sincere empathy for her weathered state, Shadow's ego had a funny way of twisting meaning.

"Look, _animal_, just because you think you're all that doesn't mean you have to insult me." She glared at him, her breathing still heavy.

Shadow gaped at her. She _really _thought he was insulting her by stating his abilities? _Him?_ No one could measure up to the performance of the ultimate life-form, it was a fact. How could she be offended by that? He finally settled on avoiding a time-consuming fight and tedious explanation. "Fine, I'll slow down. Just try to keep up."

Before she could protest, he was on the move again. Flabbergasted, Galaxina realized she was staring at his back and quickly struggled to her feet. "Amazing…you are really intending to just keep going? You are such an indifferent…jerk!" Using the last of her energy, she sprinted to catch up with the hedgehog before he got too far away.

As they moved deeper into the inner caverns, Galaxina felt the air searing her lungs as her limbs screamed for rest. She struggled to keep up with the jogging Shadow, who continued to pull further and further away. As they hurried down the corridors, the ceilings' patchwork of openings allowed flashes of light to illuminate the corridors, their shadows tailing them with each streak of lightning.

"Shadow, slow down!" Galaxina panted as she stumbled over to a stalagmite to buoy her weary form. "I'm not made for running..."

"You already said that." The black and red hedgehog spun to face her, pausing to reevaluate his partner. He noticed now how her head heaved with every breath, how her panting was on the verge of gasping, and how her white face was flushed even fainter from her exertions. Clearly she was untrained for any form of running; they were only two and a half miles from the corridor. She would not be able to continue the two miles that were left at this rate, and neither would he: having to restrain himself to speed walking was driving him crazy.

Shadow smirked and turned back to the corridor. "I'll be back in a few minutes." He stretched into a runner's crouch. "Oh, and try putting your hands behind your head and inhaling through your nose. It will help."

Leaving the bewildered Petali in his wake, Shadow raced for the innermost cave.

T*B*Y*B

Meanwhile, the defense plan had worked well after all. Too well, though. The group had blinded the Nexu that first came into the cave and killed them. Same with those that followed. In a matter of a few minutes the men realized they had killed twenty Nexu, but now none were coming through the mouth of the cave.

"Um, sir?" Biome had hurried to the mouth to search for the feline killers. "There are ten Nexu trying to find another hole to come in through on the higher slopes…"

Maerick grinned. "So what's the issue, this is the only cave opening you said, so they can't get in, right?"

Biome shook his head. "Some parts of the tunnel that winds through the mountain are uncovered. They're big enough that we get lightning strikes though them, so I think the Nexu could squeeze through the openings."

Maerick sprinted for the rear cave opening. "Shadow and Galaxina!"

The clones and other humans ran out the mouth of the cave to chase down the renegade felines, while Maerick rushed down the tunnel to Galaxina and Shadow.

As the corridor cleared and footsteps faded, the Nexu that had been feigning death slowly climbed to its feet, stretched its forepaws, and extended its talons, waking from its nap of imitated death. Warily eyeing the mouth of the tunnel that the sounds of footsteps echoed from, the beast gently swished its tail before skulking down the passage. It was time to hunt.

Maerick's progress was slow, to say the least. The cave's rock floor had been rubbed smooth, probably by centuries of wind erosion, and he could not get enough traction with his boots to run. So he settled on a fast march with long strides, but he was still going nowhere fast.

_At this rate they will be dead before I get there._ Maerick paused as he realized his error. _What am I thinking? Wherever Shadow is right now is probably the safest place in this cave. No, wait, it definitely is the safest place. I should go help the others hunt the Nexu on the mountain top._

Maerick turned around to head back, but his feet slid out from under him. As he fell forward, the ground rose to meet him with a metallic clang from his suit, but in the silence that followed a swishing shadow caught his eye. Then he heard the tiny clicks of claws on rock approach, the shadow getting bigger as it came closer. His arms beneath him, Maerick struggled to raise his body enough to silently free his gun that was pinned beneath his torso. As the sounds drew in, his gun was almost free, but nearer still they came. They were only a few feet away now, but as he pulled the gun from under his stomach his elbow struck a stalagmite.

The noises stopped altogether.

Silence ensued, and in the stifling darkness Maerick noticed the shadow was no longer swishing, but a slow and noiseless drawing back, as if a spring was coiling…the white rush of dread overwhelmed the soldier as he realized the shadow was getting ready to pounce. Like a cat. With a tail that swished. Like a cat. And claws that would rip him apart, armor and all. Not like a cat. He was only a few feet away from a Nexu, flat on the ground, and didn't even have his gun fully drawn.

_The only thing that will hurt more than this burning fear will be having those claws tear into me._ He smiled. _There are worse things, I suppose. Strange though, for a while there hasn't been a flash of-_

Lightning streaked across the skies above, illuminating the cavern in blinding white light that reflected off Maerick's armor and straight into the feline would-be hunter's eyes. The perfect boon, a blinded Nexu shrieked in agony as it scratched at its formerly dilated eyes. Seizing the chance, Maerick sprung to his feet and fired three shots at the beast, but too slowly for the beast had already sprung behind a stalagmite. Maerick slowly backed up the tunnel deeper into the mountain, the soldier ready to shoot his own shadow but still alive. For the moment. A few feet away, the Nexu was already out from behind the rocks and using the darkness to slink closer to the prey that had now scalded its eyes twice. It would enjoy this kill.

Maerick continued to carefully touch one foot to the ground behind him before placing his full weight on it so that he would not fall. Foot behind foot, he continued to move deeper into the lightless tunnel as he swept the cave in front of him with his gun. The darkness swallowed the cat's shadow, leaving Maerick to guess where the sounds of the claws were coming from. The occasional streak of light from the lightning didn't help anymore, because the beast would be hidden once the flash came. How it did, Maerick did not know, but he hoped the stupid cat was guessing and would mess up.

_That, or someone is bound to come back eventually, right?_ Maerick continued his slow march backwards into the cave. _Hopefully…_

T*B*Y*B

Deeper within the cave, Shadow was already halfway back to Galaxina. When he had gotten to the inner chamber, he remembered why the others told him to take her when his sensor revealed the emerald was in a safe. Its walls were coated in some energy diffusing technology that kept absorbing his Chaos Spears. So he settled on taking the thing to Galaxina to have her open it. She heard him coming, and stood to greet him. When jerked to a stop in front of her, with the perfect balance of the ultimate life form, she smiled.

"Thank you for the helpful tip," her smile evaporated as she shot him a withering glare. "But never, ever leave someone sitting in the dark alone like that! I have half a mind to slap you for your inconsiderate behavior. Didn't you even think that a Nexu could have come down the tunnel and found me? Then what would you do with the safe?"

Shadow stared back at her with his stoic leer. "Look, I'm sorry. I didn't remember that the emerald was in a safe, or I would have just carried you or something. Anyway, I have it right here, so can you open it?

Galaxina's icy glare turned to pure disbelief. "Are you teasing me? Did you really not hear a…fine. I will aid you with this." She stood and brushed her skirt, then went to the keypad on the safe and punched in a few numbers.

The front hatch swung open revealing the sparkling purple gem inside. Shadow slowly removed the gem and then tossed the safe aside as he inspected the emerald.

"This is the emerald." He rotated the jewel as he inspected its depths.

Galaxina smiled and quickly turned to head back down to the corridor.

"Wait, we can save some time. I'll teleport us back with Chaos Control."

She turned to face him again. Her smile carried a cold indifference. "Whatever you say, ultimate life form." She walked over and grabbed his arm. "Lead the way."

Shadow smirked. "Fine, we're going." The gem began to glow. As Shadow let the energy build, energy was also building in the clouds above. Shadow stretched the emerald up to release the energy when the clouds released their own. The lightning bolt was pulled to the emerald like a magnet in the open cavern. When it struck, the light exploded, enveloping the entire mountain in blinding white light. As it faded and the dust settled, there was a crater in the mountain's place.

**Two hours later, a mountain of rubble, location unknown…**

Maerick struggled under a large stalactite that had fallen on him after the flash of light. Maerick stared at where the tunnel with the Nexu had been a few minutes before, but now it had collapsed. He was flat on his stomach with the rock lying squarely across his shoulders, unable to do more than survey for the moment. The walls of the cave that hadn't collapsed already were riddled with cracks, and the smooth floor was now littered with dust and debris from the ruin.

_What happened? There was a flash…then it felt like I was free falling…and now this…_Maerick paused as he noticed there was sunlight above. He turned his head as far as he could manage, and noticed a hole in the outer cave wall that peeked out at miles of treetops stretching to the horizon.

_Is that a forest? Jungle? Why are there trees and sunlight? What the heck was that flash of light?_

A flock of Technicolor birds flew above the tops of the trees, and Maerick realized he could hear the gentle hum of insects.

_Beautiful scenery, I wish I could stare at it all day…_ cold panic suddenly swept through Maerick, and he thrashed under the rock, trying to free himself. _The Nexu! It could still be here…Then what do I do?_ He twisted once more against the stone pillar, but its weight was too much for his muscles. He waited in silence for a few seconds, both listening for the beast and trying to think his way out of his predicament. Then he remembered the hydraulic joints in the armor.

_If I can just free my left arm, I can use them to help me lift this oversized rock!_ He struggled to wrestle the arm out from under his stomach. After what seemed an eternity of wiggling, his arm slid free. Maerick quickly activated the hydraulics controls and lifted the stone on his back with his arms. He let the rock slide off and tumble away before he moved again to shut off the hydraulics.

_Just like doing a push up._ He chuckled, when a faint beeping caught his attention. He reached for the source of the sound on his belt and realized he was holding the Chaos Emerald tracker.

Hope sprouted in his chest as he realized he was also alone, the hunter hopefully crushed in the tunnel. "Hey, no matter where I am, if I can get the emerald, Tails will find me!"

Maerick took a moment to survey the vast expanse before him. The ground at the base of the mountain was crushed, the grey Tes' La rock meeting the rich brown soil of the jungle floor like jigsaw puzzle pieces; jagged rocks, as well as broken and dismembered trees, littered a ten meter radius around the mountain. As he followed the brown away from the mountain to the edge of the jungle, leaves and branches melted away into a sea of lush green under a light-yellow sky. Birds that moved from place to place above the trees were tiny blips of color in a vast expanse of jungle.

He turned back to the grey ruin._ No sign of the others either…_ Maerick struggled against the despair of possibly losing his unit a third time. _First the jungles, then in space, and now here…no, not here. I can still find them!_

Maerick hurried back to the exposed tunnel, calling out names of people in the group, but quickly found that all the enclosed caves had collapsed. He tried to find any way to move to another part of the mountain, still moving down the list of names as he shouted, but it was to no avail.

After moments of silence, he resigned himself to the unhappy alternative. _Once I get the Chaos emerald I can look for them more, but I need to make sure I don't lose that emerald right now…_And so, reader in hand, Maerick carefully climbed through the hole in the cave wall and down towards the darkness of the jungle below.

T*B*Y*B

A few kilometers away, the ruthless cat was once more on the prowl, inspecting ruins of a different kind of rubble. It carefully navigated the sparking hallways of a wrecked space ship, looking for any prey. When the flash came, it had fled to the outer corridor before the ground seemed to fall from under its feet, where the corridor's collapse had batted it free and sent it rolling into the jungle. Now back in its element, the hunter had found this wreck. Wreckage means death, and death means easy food. So here it was stalking the ship, in search of a meal. As it rounded a corner, faint clanging reached its ears. Though the corridor was still mostly housed, the crash had torn various holes that allowed some light in. Enough of it, at least, for the feline to spot its next prey; clueless rodent of some kind totting a glowing prize with its forked tail, so oblivious to the cat that it continued to stop every few feet and check on the large, glowing gem it held.

The Nexu crouched silently in an alcove as it waited for the rat to draw near. The sounds drew closer, and the cat stretched deeper into its pouncing position, ready to take its next prize. The rat finally came around the corner, and the Nexu pounced, mouth open, snapping up the rodent and its prize before it could make a noise. The cat quickly dismembered the meat and swallowed, but almost choked on the stone. It lay on the floor moaning as the stone painfully worked its way down its esophagus, and then tried to nap the ensuing stomach ache away. It finally settled into a restful sleep as the Chaos Emerald nestled into a nook in the beast's stomach. When the pain passed, the beast purred in contentment from its mostly satisfying meal.

It quickly awoke to birds fleeing the trees nearby, and as the monstrous hunter stretched it heard footsteps. It jumped to its feet and slunk to an opening, where it saw the large thing from the caves coming toward it, looking down at something in its paw.

Maerick noticed the signal was moving now, and looked up to see a Nexu standing inside the wreckage looking back at him. As it leapt to the mud-covered jungle floor, the emerald detector followed its movements.

_Now how in the world…it swallowed an emerald? Great, this will be _so _much fun…_ Maerick rolled his eyes as he gently eased the detector back into his waist holder and settled into a combat stance, slowly patting around his armor in search of his gun.

_Crud, I left it in the cave!_

As the beast eyed him, he remained stead fast in his stance.

The feline rock-eater began to purr. It would have its chance for payback after all. The beast slowly paced in a circle around the soldier, its tail playfully teasing back and forth in soft, deft twitches. Maerick slowly removed a combat dagger from the forearm of his armor, allowing his fingers to wrap around its grip only a centimeter at a time. After what seemed an eternity of a stalemate, Maerick had finally eased the blade from its niche in the armor. Apparently, the Nexu was also satisfied that the veteran would not put up a difficult fight because it had stopped moving and was simply eying him.

"Here, my little cat friend. Come to Maerick. You have my gem, and I want it back." He watched the tiger-like animal as he slowly spread his feet and drew the knife into the open. "That's right little kitten. I have fangs too. Come to Maerick, you little thief."

The Nexu twitched its tail slower, slightly confused now. It's prey that had been scared motionless was now making noises at it. Agitated noises. Perhaps there should be another approach. The alien tiger backed away slowly. Maerick waited until it was outside the clearing before following, but he still found the tracks easily enough. They snaked through the underbrush for a little while before they disappeared when he arrived at a fork in the foliage.

"Now where did-" he heard the quiet purring too late. The Nexu was dropping straight down at him, claws and teeth at the ready to tear him to bite-sized pieces.

Well, that could really ruin your day. Just how will this turn out? And just what has happened to the others of the Tes' La group? Find out next chapter! As always, comments, criticisms, suggestion, etc. are welcome, and if you have any concerns, feel free to shoot me a PM. I hope you have a great day!


	11. Chapter 11

A/N: Sorry for the delay in my updating, on top of it taking so long to write this chapter I posted the last probably a tad too quickly. Well, here's the resolution to the last cliffhanger. I hope you enjoy! Disclaimer still applies.

Thanks to Epsilon Team Captain Hande, TailsLovesCosmo, and ASHPD for reviewing.

_T_B_Y_B_

**_ECTF Gerald_, Two hours earlier…**

"Come on, Tails! Can't you work any faster?" An impatient pink hedgehog rhythmically tapped her fingers on her crossed forearms as she waited. "At this rate the Metarex will escape before you finish with this stupid computer."

The fox grunted from underneath the weapons control terminal Sonic found. "Shouldn't you guys be piloting the ship?"

Amy shrugged. "Bokkun and Cream said they could handle it. They found an autopilot control, so even Bokkun can't mess it up too bad. Now hurry up already, before we get close enough that they can shoot at _us_!"

Tails was trying to fix the connection for the power source that kept shutting the computer off before he could turn the weapons on. The problem was that she was right. The Metarex were fleeing with what the Emerald detectors showed as 3 Chaos Emeralds, so it would be terrible if the escape succeeded. Or if they managed to damage the _Gerald _in a failed attempt to prevent the escape.

Tails grunted again as he finished tightening a bolt to secure the wires in place and gently slid out from under the console to survey his handiwork. He climbed to his feet and wiped some grease from his cheek as he started to punch in commands to the console. As it came time to press the "Initiate Protocols" command, he paused in the silence as all eyes nervously watched to see if the screen would go black again. Once he pressed it and the computer began to run its confirmation processes, he ran through the computer's routine in his head. Show message stating that the process had started, have fans on console speed up to accommodate heat made by the higher functions, and then the turn screen black and shut system off.

Except, instead of turning black a message appeared that the process was finished and the ship began shaking as lights on the smaller monitors began flashing in a brilliant jubilee of color. Looking quickly at the video screens, the group watched the spectacle of colors from the shells and lasers fired from the ship's weapons as they slammed through the hulls of the Metarex ships, exploding in brilliant reds, oranges, and yellows. They watched in awe as the fiery wrecks begin to move toward a small green planet and then disappear into the planet's atmosphere, shrinking to the size of dots and finally vanishing altogether.

"Well," Knuckles finally broke the stunned silence, "that was anticlimactic. At least now there are three emeralds on one planet. And all we have to do is go get them."

Sonic quickly perked up. "Hey yeah, and when I get my hands on a tracker, you just watch me. I'll set a new speed record to scour that entire planet in less than a day. We'll have those Emeralds back in no time!" He delivered a final thumbs-up, and the matter was settled.

Tails smiled as his friends began to talk excitedly, the sounds of their voices becoming louder with each passing minute. In the span of a few hours, they had managed to overcome a small fleet of Metarex forces with the push of a button, and in another few hours they would be halfway to their goal. His emotions in an uproar louder than the voices he heard, Tails quickly snuck away and retreated to the safe silence of his room.

_Cosmo, we're almost halfway there!_ He smiled as the door to his room slid open, revealing the pot with her seed comfortably perched on a shelf below his window. The sight was enough to break his countenance, and as the door closed tears of joy and sadness and pain and hope rushed down his cheeks. Two months he had slept in the captain's chair to avoid this room, but he never missed a morning in it. He would sneak in and settle on the bed, simply trying to piece together the words he would say to her. Would he tell her how happy everyone was to see her again? How happy he was to see her? About how much he missed her? Loved her? About the craziness since her fateful and confusing death? Or would he greet her and let her take the lead with questions, answering them with collected calm and patience? Would he be able to speak? Or would his tears break forth as they had now? There were so many questions he wanted to ask, and yet at times he could not even put one to words. The pent up emotions were too much, and so they poured out now as waiting ate at his heart. At least there was something there now, not emptiness in his chest like there was before; he felt the gradual warmth of hope. Despite his fears and uncertainties, he knew that the wait would be worth it. This all would be worth it.

"Cosmo," he finally summoned the resolve to speak. "You…you will be…"

As the words escaped him again, he realized he was on the floor, his back leaning against the door. He slowly climbed to his feet, went to the sink, and washed the tears from his face. _I can't let them see me like this again. It's almost time for her to come back, and I will be strong for her!_

As he finished drying his face, he heard a tentative knocking at his door.

"Tails, you alright buddy?" It was Sonic, his voice the final piece of the mettle for Tails' resolve. "We're almost to the planet, and we need you to land the ship."

Tails rushed to open the door, smiling ear to ear. "Sorry Sonic, I wanted to check something. I'm coming right now."

As the door opened, the spry young fox sped past the hedgehog, giggling. "Come on, Sonic, last one to the bridge gets an ice cream for the winner!"

"You're on!" Sonic smiled and counted down the head start he'd give his young friend. _Maerick and Shadow, you better not have sent us on this chase for nothing. If he gets hurt again…_ Tails' distant taunts made the blue hedgehog realize he'd lost track of his count and Tails was already halfway to the cabin. "Haha, oh well, I guess I'll owe him an ice cream. Maybe. He hasn't won yet!"

The hedgehog raced off after his young friend, but Tails saw him coming and sped up again. "You don't get to beat me that easy, Sonic!"

As they came down the long corridor to the bridge, a flash of light hit them like a wall. When it subsided, the duo looked up from ground by the wall they had crashed into. To their amazement, they saw a shocked Shadow standing with a Chaos Emerald in his hands, but what left them speechless was what looked like an older, blue version of Cosmo clinging to his arm.

The black and red hedgehog seemed to come to his senses and as he realized where he was and that Sonic and Tails were staring at him as they climbed to their feet. "Yeah, I'm back. What are you gawking at?"

Then he realized they were staring at the Seedrian on his arm. "Oh, her. This is Galaxina." He slowly eased his arm free of the clutch of the Seedrian frozen in surprise, and turned her shoulders until she was facing the two, though her eyes were still fiercely squeezed shut. "And, Galaxina, the blue hedgehog is Sonic, and the orange fox is Tails."

The Petali didn't move for a few seconds of silence. Finally, she peaked through one eye before gently easing both open and, seeing her new hosts, quickly bowed. "My name is Galaxina. It is a pleasure to meet you." She froze again as she finished, the oddity of the sight of the two new companions dawning on her.

Tails cleared his throat. "Hi, I'm Tails. I'm the pilot and engineer of this ship."

She blinked, quickly smiled, and bowed again. Then she turned to Shadow and whispered to him. "Okay, we are back and safe. So where is Maerick? He said he had something to tell me about Cosmo…"

Shadow's eyes widened as he realized the gravity of what she was asking, but was saved by Tails.

Still eyeing the Petali, he rushed over to the hedgehog. "Oh, Shadow. We just shot down Metarex ships carrying three Chaos Emeralds. We need to get to the planet so that we can get them."

The hedgehog, inwardly relieved, shrugged to the Seedrian and followed the duo as they headed to the cabin to prepare to land.

A puzzled Galaxina found herself, for the second time, being left behind. She turned to catch up when a thought hit her. Maybe he really knew what she was asking for. Maybe he was just avoiding her questions because something had happened to Cosmo. But that couldn't be it, could it? Maerick had promised nothing would. But something had happened to him, so what if something had happened to her sister too? The thoughts zipping across her conscience like arrows, she trudged on to try to catch up to the three figures ahead.

_T_B_Y_B_

**Jungle Planet, present…**

Maerick tried to roll into a defensive stance, but the Nexu had dropped out of the tree too quickly, and before he had so much as spread his feet the feline had batted him into a tree trunk like a rag doll. As soon as he hit the ground, Maerick rolled away from the tree, missing the beast's pounce by only a few inches. The soldier sprung to his feet and readied his blade, grunting as pain shot through his body. The cat had probably broken a few of his ribs.

Undeterred by his dodge, the Nexu climbed to its feet and began circling him. With each pass, the beast came closer to him.

Maerick felt himself walking backwards through overgrown bushes and screens of vines as the beast circled closer and closer in wide arcs, like the axe on a pendulum of some torture device swinging ever nearer, ready to cut him to pieces. Maerick tried a feint to make the beast flinch, but it continued to move unhindered, its course unaltered. Maerick tried changing directions to see how it would react, but it simply followed him, circling now – each revolution bringing it another quarter of a meter closer.

_What is this? Do animals really hunt like this, or is it just toying with me?_ He studied the beast's face and could almost make out what looked like a twisted, toothy smirk. _Probably toying with me. Guess blinding it twice isn't a good way to make friends…_

As the darkness thickened with each step farther away from the clearing, Maerick felt his boots begin to sink into the ground. He looked down and noticed mud, then frantically checked over his shoulder to see if he was walking into a swamp. The relief he felt when he saw that there was no bog was jolted to fear as he realized that he may have traded one death for another. He had forgotten the most basic concept of fighting and had taken his eye off his opponent. Except this time, he wasn't kick-boxing with Knuckles; he was fighting for his life with a vengeful predator that would slice him to ribbons if given the chance. The world seemed to slow as he spun his head back, and out of the corner of his eye he could see the beast leaping for him, claws-first.

Maerick let his legs collapse beneath him, but the clawed paws swung down to meet him. He could hear them scraping across metal as he felt the force behind one of the beast's swinging paws thrust his shoulder forward, spinning him around on his knees as he was knocked into a bush next to him. Pain coursed through his veins as he heard cracking in his left arm and his ribs, his body protesting against the abuse. He let himself lay silently wrapped in the leaves for a moment, the world once again moving at normal speed. As the pain roared in his ears, he lay limply and tried to gather his thoughts. He could feel the deafening sound subside gradually like the tide ebbing from a beach.

As this passed in the span of moments, Maerick watched the beast land and turn toward him. Clutching the knife in his hand, he laid perfectly still in the midst of the bush and instinctively held his breath. The large tiger drew closer to inspect its kill.

_Who says animals can't be too prideful to follow their instincts?_ He readied his knife wielding arm as the beast drew even nearer. When it drew to within a meter away, he swallowed his pain and let his broken arm feebly twitch behind him like a dying animal would. The beast froze, checking for any signs of life, but once it was reassured, it purred happily as it began flex its claws and lick its teeth. Half a meter, claws raking grooves in the mud, the beast saw the knife clutched in Maerick's hand. Too late. It tried to run from the ambush, but the mud of the jungle floor sucking at its paws kept it in place as the human sprung off the roots of the tree, its drawn knife now gleaming in one of the beams of sunlight.

_My turn, beastie._

T*B*Y*B

As he knelt in darkened waters cleaning the gem, the Chaos Emerald glowed gently in the shadows cast on the small pool by the canopy of the jungle. Light leaked through in small beams, turning the darkness to grey. Once Maerick had finished cleaning the battle from his armor, he climbed onto the water's bank and tenderly slid onto his back. Gem in hand, he held it up to a stream of light that snuck through the net of leaves above him, slowly turning it as he explored the depths of the gem.

_What are these things that they can have so much power? And what do I do now?_

He sat up and climbed gingerly to his feet. He realized he had forgotten how much fighting took a toll on the body as he slowly tested his trigger hand and arm. He was relieved to find that he could move them without searing pain. But despite the happy discovery of no broken bones in his trigger arm, Maerick felt a faint familiarity with his body from before his death. Not to mention the pain from his ribs and his other arm, he felt a feint tugging at his joints like a phantom of the arthritis he had once dealt with daily.

"Hm. I'm too young to feel old. Yet." He smirked as he waded through the underbrush out to the clearing. As he looked to the sky, he saw the red tinge of sunset as night crept up into the expanse, led by a charge of twinkling stars.

_Time to get back to the mountain. No telling what kind of animals live here._

The light slowly fading, Maerick carried his prize back to the giant rock jutting above the trees. By the time he reached the peak of colorless rock, the grey sand seemed to match the rest of the forest in the dark. When he reached the cave half-way to the mountain's summit, Maerick's feet were dragging behind him.

The sounds of creatures stirring below the canopy of trees of the jungle snapped Maerick out of his trance. He went to work moving rubble to block off the hole. Once he was finished, using what little light he could get from the stars, Maerick set about in search of his gun. After a frustrating eternity he finally, in the alcove of a crushed stalagmite, found it, its entire length camouflaged from its coat of dust. Maerick quickly disassembled the gun and set about inspecting the pieces. Once he was satisfied it was fine, he took out his grease and brush and started cleaning the dust from his weapon.

_At least a tranq gun is better than no gun. We'll see about finding a replacement when Tails and the others find me._ He nonchalantly wiped down the pieces as he looked up at the twin moons in the sky, listening to the roars of the hunters and the cries of the hunted around him. It was going to be a long night.

_T_B_Y_B_

**Unknown location…**

Red pine was furious. Not just angry, steamed, peeved, or irked, but the tear-an-assistant's-head-off kind of angry. What's worse was that his assistants knew it too and were nowhere to be found. Thus he was left with no means of venting his aggression. So he was forced to settle for screaming at the first person stupid enough to try to talk to him. Why was he so angry? Well, allow this lowly captain robot scurrying into the room to find out.

"S-s-s-sir…" The trembling bipedal beetle fearfully raised a claw in a salute.

Red pine remained standing at the window of his dark quarters, a silhouette in the dim light from the jungle outside; he did not bother with facing the unfortunate bot. "What is it you have to say, because now is not really the time."

The bot considered fleeing for its artificial life because he knew the deep, eerily calm tone was the beginning of something terrible. It was about to turn to run when he heard the door slam shut. Too late.

"And don't even _think_ of leaving: that would be incredibly _rude_ of you to do now." There was more hostility, pointed emphasis, and perceptible tenseness in his words now. Here it comes. "After all, not only were three of my cruisers shot down by a single ship, but three of our Chaos Emeralds were lost. Three! Our entire two months of wars and sieges were wasted in a matter of two hours because of the interference of puny _animals_.

The robot's circuits buzzed nervously. It wished it'd paid attention to that morning's bulletin now. Maybe then it would have been able to talk its partner into coming instead. If only…

"Now unless you have something good to tell me, I am going to use you to test my new sidearm that the technicians made for me. It's designed to burn through armor, so I would be interested to see what it does to _incompetent robots_."

The robot felt its servos slowly shutting down. This was not good. Best to try to speak as fast as possible "W-well, -intervened-and-are-now-holding-the-former-prisoner-after-we-chased-off-the-latter. We-found-that-they-wear-white-body-armor-and-already-knew-of-us-so-we-assume-they-are-rebels-of-some-kind-that-infiltrated-our-outer-defenses-but-we-stopped-the-threat. That's everything sir, so by your leave…"

The bot felt its circuits surge with hope as it turned to flee toward the doors; perhaps it would survive this after all, if Pine was not paying attention perhaps he would just open the doors and let the captain escape. Then the bot's hopes died once more.

"Wait, white armor? _White armor_!"

The harsh, incredulous tone was unmistakable. It felt that slow shutdown coming over its system again. As it heard the clanks of its leader's armor turning toward him, it imagined the undoubtedly enormous "sidearm" that the malevolent maroon megalomaniac would be pointing at it. Was it treason to think this way about the Grand Leader of the Metarex? Yes. Did the bot care? No; the bots stationed abroad didn't understand, but the bots that were consistently in his presence were consistently at his wrath's mercy. Then Red Pine surprised the captain with hope once more.

"I once heard Dark Oak say," the leader cleared his throat as he attempted to catch himself; the captain wasn't fooled by the false reverence. "Our glorious leader Dark Oak, may he rest in peace, once said that he encountered strange animals wearing white armor while he was eradicating the traitorous Petali clan, but that they were all eradicated with the mother ship's demise."

The robot's circuits buzzed with excitement. Maybe not only was it _not_ going to become scrap metal, maybe it was going to be promoted!

"Tell the captain of interrogations to commence with his questioning of the prisoners. If they don't talk, torture them and then kill them if they continue to refuse. If they talk, torture them and then feed them to the trees as a reward for their cooperation. And on your way out, send in the captain of the defenses. I need to have a word with him about weapons testing." If he hadn't been wearing a helmet, one would be able to see the sadistic perversion of a grin that the leader wore.

The robot saluted, and then spun to leave. And so the lowly captain and grand leader struck an understanding: The robot got to keep its life and live another day to perhaps be promoted to a higher rank, while Red Pine got to ease both his pent up fury and his itchy trigger finger - part of the side effects of being away from a shooting range, a far more productive alternative of disposing of this aggression compared to having to replace his captains every few weeks.

As for Baz, Biome, Slick, Snipe, and Traf, things looked a lot grimmer. Chaos Control could really mess with people's lives.

_T_B_Y_B_

Thanks for reading! Any comments, concerns, criticisms, etc are welcome as always.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

A/N: I apologize for the lateness of this chapter, which I know is overdue and then some. I wish I had more to say than writer's block, but it truly has crippled my writing progress. I apologize because you suffer along with me, and I will try my best to make it up in the future. Well back to the reading, I hope you enjoy. Disclaimer still applies.

Thank you to Epsilon Team Captain Hande and TailsLovesCosmo for reviewing.

_T_B_Y_B_

_**ECTF Gerald**_**, Bridge…**

Tails found himself lost in thought as he stared blankly at the monitor for the bridge. He aimlessly wandered from analyzing sensation to sensation, from the sound of his friends tapping at the keys for the ship's control room to sight of the green planet drawing nearer to smell of food coming from the galley. As he waited for the auto pilot to put the ship inside the planet's atmosphere, he found himself utterly useless. His friends were busy at the controls for their own stations, tapping furiously at keys and scrolling through screens of readouts, and even Bokkun was cooking for them. Well, he was microwaving food, but since Tails didn't smell anything burning, even that was getting more done.

_Sure, I could shut off the auto-pilot_… Tails thought, but he had a suspicion that the anxiousness came from another source. _I wonder if the seal for the electromagnet's circuit is done curing…if it is, maybe I'll get the chance to help Sonic if we run into any Metarex survivors._

Galaxina quietly strode into the room, her gaze just as distant as Tails' had been. He remembered Shadow's whispered warning.

_In case you don't know, she's Cosmo's sister. That's why she's asking about her_.

Tails understood her anxiety, the heart-wrenching minutes waiting for Sonic and Shadow as they had tried to revive Cosmo. _She's probably worried about Cosmo, and it can't help that everyone is avoiding her. I can't believe no one has told her yet…Maybe I should?_

But maybe that wasn't such a good idea. After all, the first thing he'd done when Sonic got back was start a war of emotions with his best friend, even though he had been trying to help.

Suddenly he found himself at the controls for the cannon once more, except – unlike his flashbacks from before – the trigger was already pressed. Sweat poured down his brow as he realized what was happening. He was trapped in a nightmare once more. Tails watched in horror as the tragedy played out for the some hundredth time in agonizing slow motion. A streak of energy. The eternity between the explosion and the Chaos Regeneration. The hope at the bright flash, and the despair at the sight of the lone white seed. A grain of color in the ensuing world of grey. Yes, that white seed became the only warmth he had on the trip back to Mobius and the months that followed.

When Tails was finally able to shake himself free of the nightmare, he found himself looking at the worried face of the blue Petali. Tails realized that he was tense, and his face hurt from grimacing.

_I thought she was Cosmo at first…_ the young fox's thoughts scattered as he tried to quickly smile and show Galaxina that he was fine.

"Tails, are you okay?" she asked, probably for a second or third time.

"Yeah," he shrugged, a gentle uneasiness settling in his chest, "just remembered that I forgot to check on something in the lab bay. I'll be right back!"

Tails sprinted from the bridge as Galaxina was realizing an annoying trend in the behavior of the animals she'd met so far.

Though Tails felt bad as he left the cockpit, he was finally grasping the motives behind the others' actions and realized it might be better this way. Or it might not, if she found out from some other way. In any case, had he lied to her about why he had acted the way he had? Yes, but his quick search for excuses had reminded him about the electromagnet. His experiment for a weapon to destroy Metarex. He had been thinking about the difficulty the group had been having with the Metarex robots and their metal bodies. The smaller ones were easy enough to handle, but the larger ones always seemed to give them difficulty. While Sonic or Knuckles could probably take them apart if they had the time, the robots were quick to defend themselves and had thick armor. So how do you disable a robot quickly without being able to physically tamper with its wiring? You find a way to overload the circuit.

"Electromagnetic Pulse." Tails smiled as he hurried to the lab. His weapon was utilizing an experimental metal to amplify the electromagnet's power, with the hope that the pulse would also be amplified. If his weapon's insulation worked, he would be able to direct the blast in a single direction, making for a weapon that the Metarex would need to fear. But before he got ahead of himself, he needed to make sure that the seal was finished, or else he might accidentally fry the entire ship.

As the doors slid open, he headed over to the room's lights that were on the opposite side of the room. Another one of Eggman's design flaws, or perhaps force of habit from trying to hide diabolical experiments from the world. Well, with Eggman maybe it was latter. After all, if everything you worked on before was highly illegal, you'd want to make sure you had an easy way to hide your from unwelcome company, right?

After carefully navigating the room of fragile equipment in the dark, Tails flipped on the lights and excitement exploded through his veins. He beamed at the device that sat on the table in front of him, its metallic luster catching both the lights and his hopes in its smooth surface. It was a metal canister with a trigger handle attached to one side, giving it the appearance of a cross between a pistol and a coffee thermos.

_Smooth means the sealant is finished curing, so let's test this out!_ Tails hurried over and snatched the device off of the table. On his way to the door he picked up the sight he had been waiting to attach. The fix paused to look over the main device's surface in a last check to verify that it had sealed before he attached the sight. Finding no problems in its alignment once attached, Tails turned and hurried to the storage room that he had set up as a testing facility. When he entered, he quickly finished preparing the four stations for his tests. They consisted of a general electronic device, two devices separated by ten feet, a device set up behind a massive section of a Metarex robot's plate armor, and finally an imitation Metarex attack drone. Each respective station would test a different aspect of the device's function and practicality: Basic function, directional accuracy, armor penetration, and finally combat plausibility.

_Let's get to work_. Tails smiled as he leveled his invention at the first target..

_T_B_Y_B_

**Location Unknown…**

It was a forest, a dark forest. For some reason there was no moon and there were no stars, yet the landscape seemed to be illuminated by faint starlight. Cosmo could barely see the outlines of shrubs as she fled down a dirt road into the darkness. Everything was shrouded by shadows under the pale, dim light that emanated from the emptiness that claimed the sky's place. She narrowly avoided the trunks of trees that had the shape of pines and their branches as she fled down the dirt path. No matter how fast she ran, though, she was still pursued by dark forms whose faces she could not see. Even though could not see their faces, Cosmo knew that they were the Metarex, and that they had found her after all this time. The sanctuary of this darkness could not hide her from their eyes. For all the imprisonment was numbing and terrifying, so far she had been able to keep her sanity intact with moments of tranquility and the comfort of knowing that it was all over: the Metarex were gone. Until now, that is.

Cosmo stopped running by a tree to catch her breath; she had run at least two miles, and perhaps sprinting was not the best way to pace oneself over a distance. She decided to check and see if she was still being followed, but just when she was confident the darkness was unmoving and she was finally alone she heard a branch snap. The young Petali did not even have time to consider what was happening when her feet instinctually started forward as fast as they could, leaving her mind to struggle though a surge of memories of the Metarex attacks brought on by the panic. Flashes of alarm lights, screams, and metallic laughter flooded her mind as her feet rushed forward with an urgency she could not instill. After a few seconds of blind flight, the memories finally subsided, leaving her to reconcile her mind to her body as she listened to the rhythm of her heartbeat working in tandem with her footfalls and breathing. It was an odd but soothing harmony.

_I wish I had more time to notice the small things…that I wasn't living this nightmare…_

As she listened for the sounds of her pursuers, her heart skipped a beat as she heard bushes rustling just behind her: they were getting closer. She felt adrenaline rush to her limbs as she tried to increase her body's tempo, but to no avail because she felt something crash into her from behind.

As the ground rushed to meet her face, Cosmo screamed. She screamed as images of Dark Oak's silhouette outlined in flames reaches for her, her home debris in space and her people destroyed. She screamed at the sound of his sinister laughter, her future sealed as he gains control of her senses. And when she finishes, she finds herself in darkness once more, a vast emptiness surrounding her. She realizes that the chase was just another dream, if the visions could really be called that. Whether or not she slept in this taboo void was debatable at best. But whatever they were, they lately tended to be nightmares. Memories of fleeing the terror of the Metarex and manifestations of her fears plagued her, disappearing just before she could feel pain. This was the first time it was the Metarex, though. Until now it had been the people that had attacked her home world, a people who she had only seen holograms of and could not remember name the name of. But now her memories were shifting. Her early childhood phobias that had caused her to cower in fear of an attack by the animals were becoming the fears of her late childhood when she had been on the run from the Metarex. Her nightmares were switching to the things that had stripped her life from her.

If she could have cried, she would have. For some reason, though, she could not feel her body in the limbo world of darkness except in the dreams. Perhaps she really didn't have one, because maybe she really was dead. So was this her fate then? To be eternally tossed between raging nightmares and the numbing void?

As she fought her panic down, Cosmo remembered the moments of peace. So what about that peace that pierced the darkness to gave her hope? The warmth that awoke her freezing soul? It came without fail each time she felt herself about to fall apart, to slip away into the void and never return. Made her see that there was a glimmer of hope after all. That maybe she would survive whatever this strange world was.

Just as she felt reassured once more, Cosmo felt the world shake, if that was possible in a world with nothing to be shaken. She would be beaming right now if she could smile because of the joy from the anticipation of what was to come. The shaking always came before the warmth, her sanctity of mind. And as the shaking stopped, Cosmo let it wash over her, allowing it to lull her raging soul into a peaceful, dreamless rest.

_T_B_Y_B_

_**ECTF Gerald**_**, Captain's Room…**

Tails finished moving Cosmo's seed from its shelf to his nightstand and sat down on his bed next to her. He did this every night so he could tell her how the day had gone and how much that he loved her and how much he couldn't wait to see her again. It was before his usual time to be talking to her, but the ship had landed on the planet and Sonic, Shadow, and Knuckles were getting ready to set out, so he wanted to make sure that even if things ran long he would still have time with her today. Tails was beaming from his successes, and though that was something he couldn't remember doing naturally before this adventure he made sure to be happy when he was around Cosmo. Even in those miserable times from before, he had made a point that she wouldn't have to worry if she could hear him at all. He did not want her having to bear his load on top of her own. Maybe he was being silly and his actions didn't affect her, but he was determined to try to help however he could. When this was all over they would be able help each other face life, but until then he was going to do what was needed and try to help her carry her burden, whether or not she knew it.

"Well, Cosmo, today I have great news! Today I tested a new weapon that I designed to attack the Metarex, and it worked perfectly!" Tails looked fondly at the metal canister sitting on his desk. "It will be able to penetrate their armor, and it's focused enough that I can use it on single targets without harming any machinery that they're by. Now I'll be able to help if we run into danger, and I'm working on a tranquilizer barrel that I'll be able to attach to it so I can help Sonic even if we face things that aren't robots."

Tails felt warmth flood his body with the thought of being able to defend himself from the Metarex. The idea of being able to help instead of standing by in an attack gave him a sense of confidence that he finally had a say in the world around him, something that had been lacking for quite some time. Now he would be able to protect what he held dear. He smiled and looked down at Cosmo's seed and then shook his head to clear his thoughts. This was no time to get distracted.

"Um…oh, I forgot to mention that we lost Maerick, but Shadow and Galaxina are here now. That's right, your sister is here!" Tails mentally grimaced when he realized what he had to say next. "She…doesn't know that you are gone yet, but we'll tell her soon. And when you get back, we'll all be so happy to see you that this will all be worth it!"

A faint beeping from his wrist told him that it was time to go. "I have to go now, Cosmo, but I'll be back soon." He moved her pot back to the window. "Hang in there, Cosmo."

He hurried out of the room and through the maze of perpendicular corridors to the hangar. The room was the size of a warehouse, big enough to house a fleet of fighter craft. Though simple in construct, its only remarkable features besides its size were three metal beams that helped reinforce the support for the ceiling, it gave Tails a measure of peace to be in its vast space.

But he was not here for comfort, he reminded himself as he hurried over to the main doors where the unloading ramp would be. The hangar doubled as a docking bay and so it was equipped with a ramp for loading supplies and the like. Tails saw Shadow, Sonic, and Knuckles slowly walking from ramp, but noticed that they seemed huddled together. Tails rushed across the hangar to his friends, and Sonic's head shot up at the sound of footsteps.

"Tails," he smiled, "what have you been up to? I've been trying to get through to you for over an hour. I saw that you were in the lab, so I left you alone."

Tails checked his communication watch, and finding the battery dead he laughed. "Oops, I forgot to charge it in my excitement. I developed a new…" The fox stopped as he noticed a fourth figure in the group, what looked like a case of armor sprawled on the hangar floor.

Tails cleared his throat and turned back to Sonic, eyes searching for answers. "Did you already…is that…"

Sonic put his hand on his young friend's shoulder, smiling reassuringly. "We did already go searching earlier, which was why I was trying to get you." Sonic paused, carefully choosing his next words. "We found him a few miles into the jungle clutching an emerald, but we're not sure what happened. We found a few shots from his rifle embedded in a plant by him and some kind of powder on his armor, so we think he may have been sprayed with a toxic gas or something."

Tails stared back at the soldier's body. "Is he…"

Sonic smiled. "No. He's seen better days, but he's just knocked out for now. We're taking him to the Medical bay. I just had get Knuckles to help so we could try to not drag him." He laughed. "I don't know how Maerick runs around in that thing, because it must weigh more than a ton!"

Tails smiled. "Automated joints. They move with the wearer to make the armor feel almost weightless."

Sonic smiled and shrugged before he turned back to the others. Tails went over to help with the legs. The group had hoisted him up and carried him half-way through the hangar when Cream came running into the hangar pushing one of Eggman's hovering gurneys. It may not have seemed like it would be strong enough, but it did its job well enough.

"I'll take him from here!" She told Sonic once they had moved the soldier onto the gurney.

Tails stood watching bewilderedly for a moment as she rushed the man down the hallway as disappeared from view. Shadow was the first to speak.

"All right, Eggman's medical droids will handle it from here. And because they won't even let us into the room once they start their procedures, I say we go look for the rest of the Chaos Emeralds." Shadow looked at each of the group as he held up an Emerald and a tracking device. "Maerick found one already, but that means that there are two other emeralds still out there. I say we find them."

Sonic and Knuckles quickly nodded in agreement while Tails stared at the ground as he pondered the choices. Finally, the fox looked up at Shadow. "Okay, but let me get my invention first."

"Okay, that works out well." Sonic interjected before Shadow could object. "Even though it seemed safe to move Maerick, we should still clean up to make sure that we won't get poisoned from anything that was left over, okay?"

The hedgehog looked at Knuckles who nodded and then Shadow who simply shrugged before leaving the hangar. "Tails, you should probably clean up too, since you helped carry him."

Tails sighed, but agreed. He ran to his cabin to shower. After quickly rinsing and drying himself off, the young kitsune hurried to the lab to get his new weapon for its first field test, but stopped into the Medical bay along the way to check on his friend. He found Cream already sitting in the visitors' room with Galaxina anxiously seated next to her. The visitor's room had a glass wall that almost completely encircled a row of benches, the glass ending at a metal corridor that lead to the main hallway. The glass wall looked into each of the surrounding medical chambers of the bay. Though there were actually dozens of these units scattered throughout in case a larger population stayed in the ship, this was the closest one to the Hangar, so Tails had a feeling that Cream brought Maerick here. He walked to the glass in front of the soldier's room and spent a few moments taking in the scene. The room's walls were lined with computers and monitors, all of which focused around a single bed that was suspended in the middle of the wedge-shaped room. Tails turned and smiled grimly to the rabbit and Galaxina, though the Seedrian seemed lost in her thoughts as she stared at the man in the bed.

Cream smiled warmly back. "Don't worry, he's fine. The droids gave him medicine to battle the poison, and he still hasn't woken up yet, so you haven't missed anything."

Tails nodded. "I figured, but I just wanted to see him." The fox paused as a thought entered his mind. "It's not important, but how did the robots treat him with his armor on?"

Cream giggled. "I don't know how, but they took off his helmet to use the medicine, and then they put it back on. Bokkun started getting scarred because he thought that they were taking Maerick's head off. After we realized what was going on, Bokkun got really embarrassed and left to get us some stuff while we wait for Maerick to wake up."

Tails chuckled. "Okay, thanks Cream. Do you want something to eat before we leave?"

The rabbit gently shook her head. "I'm fine, thank you. That's something Bokkun was going to get us. You should go, though, if the others are waiting for you."

"Okay, thanks, Cream," Tails said, "see you guys in a bit!"

With that he rushed to the hangar.

*T*B*Y*B*

Tails swatted at an insect that was buzzing by his ear as he followed behind Knuckles; Shadow had taken point while Sonic followed behind Tails to keep him company. At least that had been the plan, but conversation was hard to have on the move. Especially since they had been hiking for about an hour in the heat of the jungle, which was really – although it looked flat from above –a series of rolling hills and valleys masked beneath the lush greenery. The past ten minutes had been spent walking up a muddy incline in an attempt to traverse the maze of tree trunks, so the group was hot, tired, and dirty. Sure they were shielded by trees, but the same lush greenery that kept out light held in a heat that seemed to be amplified in the humid air.

Shadow waved the group to a stop as they neared the top. Unfortunately for Tails, this was just as he finally clapped the bug that had been nipping at the tips of his ears.

Shadow glared at Tails for the sudden clamor. "Quiet." He whispered. "We don't want something to find us."

Tails averted his eyes in apology, which he hoped would appease the hedgehog. As he did, something on the other side of the ridge caught his gaze. It looked like there was a dark expanse nestled in the hillside, as if the jungle had nothing beneath foliage…

"Wait, Shadow," Tails whispered in confusion.

"What?"

"Is the signal coming from the Southeast?"

Shadow checked the tracker and paused. "Yeah, how did you know that?"

Tails pointed at the dark spot. The group quickly climbed to the crest of the hill to get a better view, and found themselves staring into the mouth of a gaping cavern that stretched to the bottom of the hill. They were standing on a ledge above the mouth of a cave that alone was probably wide enough for the _Gerald_ to fit through, and the empty darkness that filled the cavern suggested its depth was equally vast. The group also realized that it was staring at a long fall to the ground from the shelf they were standing on.

"Of course," Shadow smirked after checking the tracker, "another cave."

Knuckles grunted. "Well, no use standing here. Let's get to the bottom

The group quickly went to climbing down the hill, but it was slow work on the steep hillside.

_I don't like this_, Tails thought, _something seems wrong about this cave…_

_T_B_Y_B_

**Inside the Cavern…**

A gentle pulsing awoke the beast from its slumber in the depths of the labyrinth it called home. The perimeter alarms had been tripped and were sending rhythms of current into the computer system. Power surged to its limbs as it lethargically climbed to its feet and tested its appendages before it detached itself from the mainframe. Maybe it would be another one of the sparkling energy containers that had disturbed it last time. The thought quickened its awakening, and soon the nameless behemoth faded into the cavern's darkness, eager to investigate.

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Thanks for reading! Any comments, concerns, criticisms, etc are welcome as always.


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